The incident of Nahel, 19, set ablaze by protesters and the Interior Minister says “extreme solidarity” is needed for rioters to be strong”
In the northwestern Paris suburb ofNanterre a police officer shot and killed a teen boy who was identified by his first name, Nahel, after they rammed through the charred remains of cars that had been set ablaze. The city hall in the suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois was set ablaze by protesters. The French capital experienced fires and some stores were broken into.
President Emmanuel Macron planned to leave an EU summit in Brussels, where France plays a major role in European policymaking, to return to Paris and hold an emergency security meeting Friday.
Around 200 police officers were injured, according to a national police spokesperson. No information was available about injuries among the rest of the population.
Schools, town halls and police stations were targeted by people setting fires, and police used tear gas, water cannons and dispersion grenades against rioters, the spokesperson said.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin on Friday denounced what he called a night of “rare violence.” His office described the arrests as a sharp increase on previous operations as part of an overall government efforts to be “extremely firm” with rioters.
A french officer accused of homicide in the 2005 killings of two boys by a police officer in the Centre of a society struggling with systemic police abuse
The government has stopped short of declaring a state of emergency, as it was after the deaths of two boys fleeing police in 2005.
The officer accused of killing another person was given a preliminary charge of voluntary homicide by the prosecutor after he concluded that conditions for legal use of the weapon weren’t met. Preliminary charges mean investigating magistrates strongly suspect wrongdoing but need to investigate more before sending a case to trial.
The officer’s lawyer, speaking on a French tv channel, apologized and said he was devastated. The officer did what he thought was necessary in the moment, attorney Laurent-Franck Lienard told the news outlet.
“He doesn’t get up in the morning to kill people,” Lienard said of the officer, whose name has not been released as per French practice in criminal cases. “He really didn’t want to kill.”
“What they are trying to do is seize this moment as an opportunity to open a wider debate about what they see as systemic police abuse, particularly in the working-class suburbs,” reporter Rebecca Rosman told NPR from Paris. There have been complaints of police brutality against lower-income households and racial minorities.
“We need to do more than say things need to calm down,” said Sopo. “The issue here is how do we make it so that we have a police force that when they see Blacks and Arabs, don’t tend to shout at them, use racist terms against them and in some cases, shoot them in the head.”
The 2005 Belfrye Grand Unruh Day Parade followed by a confrontation between four pedestrians and a gunman in Nanterre, France
In Nanterre, a peaceful march Thursday afternoon in honor of Nahel was followed by escalating confrontations, with smoke billowing from cars and garbage bins set ablaze.
The curfew was imposed in the town of Clamart because of the risk of public disorder, which is why it lasts through Monday. The curfew was announced in Neuilly-sur-Marne, a town in the eastern suburbs.
Nahel was driving a yellow Mercedes when he was shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop near Nelson Mandela Square.
The officer who admitted to firing his gun, said he did so because he was afraid a car might hit him or someone else.
In 2005, three weeks of riots were caused by the deaths of 15-year-old Bouna Traoré and 17-year-old Yared Benna, which exposed anger and resentment in neglected housing projects. The boys were killed when they hid in a power substation.
Several people have died or been wounded by French police in recent years, prompting demands for more accountability, despite the fact that gun violence is less common in France than in the US. France also saw protests against racial injustice after George Floyd’s killing by police in Minnesota.
13 people were killed by police last year, when they didn’t comply with traffic stops. Nahel is the third person to die this year in similar circumstances.
France’s Teen Police Shooting Protests “Nahel” Fleming: “It’s Not a Clue”
Citing France’s history of colonial and racist behavior toward Arabs and Black people, Fleming added, “So it really matters that this boy who was killed was North African — French North African.”
“Unrest over the killing of Nahel, whose family has Algerian roots, is about something much bigger,” she said, adding that the biases of that society and that society’s history are reflected in policing and discrimination that takes place.
The reality is it isn’t inexplicable. Fleming is the author of Restoring Slavery: Racist Legacies and White Supremacy in France.
Critics say that leaders are showing sympathy but not an intention to investigate the problems that led to Nahel’s death.
Nahel’s killing is now a rallying call, in a similar way that George Floyd’s murder by a police officer in Minneapolis in 2020 sparked widespread unrest over the police use of force, particularly against minorities.
“You are going to get a bullet in the head,” a voice is heard saying, according to the France24 news outlet. As the car moves forward, a single shot is heard. Nahel died at the scene when his car slammed into a utility pole.
Two other people were in the car with Nahel — one has spoken to police, but the other fled the scene and was being sought by law enforcement, Jarry said.
The two officers were riding their motorcycles when they attempted to stop the car after seeing it speed through bus lanes, according to France’s BFM TV, citing a timeline issued by the prosecutor’s office. The driver of the car didn’t stop until he was cut off by a traffic jam.
But after hearing conflicting versions of events about deadly violence, Green party leader Marine Tondelier was quoted saying, “You get the feeling that our police is becoming like America’s.”
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/06/30/1185394143/france-teen-police-shooting-protests-nahel
The cause of the killing of Nahel M. has not been fully-grown adults, but police have a role to play in self-defense
The chant heard repeatedly is, “Justice pour Nahel,” but while the protest center around the teenager’s tragic death, demonstrators’ demands go further.
From the mayor to the president, authorities expressed their condolences and support for Nahel’s family this week, along with a pledge to hold police accountable. But as protests intensified, leaders have increasingly focused on trying to control the crowds and prevent damage, deploying tens of thousands of police.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin showed public support for the police and other emergency personnel, issuing a letter thanking them for their restraint.
Jarry and others pleaded with protesters not to damage buildings used by residents for critical services. Two schools have been targeted, he said, and a leisure center and cultural center have been badly damaged or destroyed.
PARIS — “I’m a fully-grown adult, but my mother still seems nervous whenever I leave the house,” Djigui, one of the thousands of protesters who took to the streets on Thursday afternoon in Nanterre, a working-class suburb of Paris, told me. When she checks to make sure I have my ID card, I hear the crack in her voice.
Still, the killing of Nahel M. might have ended up as little more than a secondary news item. The media portrayed police officers as acting in self-defense, when an erratic driver tried to run them down. The officers would have been protected by a law passed in the year 2017, which loosened police restrictions on the use of guns when a driver refuses to stop. The number of police deaths in the United States have gone up in recent years and this law is believed to be one of the reasons.