Dismay and violence after a police killing in France
image: Getty ImagesTHE CARCASS of a torched car lies upside down on the pavement, its tyres burned to ashes. Opposite, a warm breeze flows through the shattered glass sides of a bus shelter. The desolation on the streets of the Pablo Picasso housing project in Nanterre, on the outskirts of Paris, follows a second night of rioting after a policeman shot dead a 17-year-old boy who lived on this estate. The killing, which took place on June 27th, has touched a nerve for many in France, and prompted an outpouring of distress as well as violence.The teenager, identified as Nahel, failed to stop when ordered to by two traffic policemen while he was driving at high speed down a bus lane in Nanterre, said Pascal Prache, the public prosecutor, on June 29th. When the police officers caught up with the car in a traffic jam, and asked the driver to switch off the engine, the car accelerated; one of the policemen shot the driver, Nahel, in the chest. He died less than an hour later. On June 29th Mr
THE CARCASS of a torched car lies upside down on the pavement, its tyres burned to ashes. Opposite, a warm breeze flows through the shattered glass sides of a bus shelter. The desolation on the streets of the Pablo Picasso housing project in Nanterre, on the outskirts of Paris, follows a second night of rioting after a policeman shot dead a 17-year-old boy who lived on this estate. The killing, which took place on June 27th, has touched a nerve for many in France, and prompted an outpouring of distress as well as violence.
The teenager, identified as Nahel, failed to stop when ordered to by two traffic policemen while he was driving at high speed down a bus lane in Nanterre, said Pascal Prache, the public prosecutor, on June 29th. When the police officers caught up with the car in a traffic jam, and asked the driver to switch off the engine, the car accelerated; one of the policemen shot the driver, Nahel, in the chest. He died less than an hour later. On June 29th Mr Prache put the policeman under formal investigation for “voluntary homicide”.
By the evening of the day of Nahel’s shooting, rioting broke out in Nanterre. It swiftly spread to other banlieues, or housing estates, that ring most cities in France, including Toulouse in the south-west and Lyon in the south-east. Cars and rubbish bins were set ablaze, as well as institutions that represent the state or public authority, such as town halls, buses and police stations. Fireworks were hurled at riot police. On the second night, at least 150 people were arrested. And on June 29th 40,000 police officers were deployed, four times the number the previous night. More than 650 people were arrested as looting took place in Paris and unrest spread to other big cities, including Marseille and Lille.
The killing has moved many in France, partly because the shooting was caught on a shocking video, which went viral on social media, and partly because there is little doubt about what happened. Speaking from Marseille on the day of Nahel’s death, a stern-looking President Emmanuel Macron called the shooting “inexplicable, inexcusable”, and expressed “the emotion of the whole nation” over Nahel’s death. Paradoxically, Mr Macron was in Marseille on a trip designed to underline the effort the government is making to improve life in the port city’s tough neighbourhoods. During the riots earlier this year against the government’s pension reform, the anger on the street was directed squarely at the president. This time, it is aimed at the police.
“There’s a lot of anger here,” says Khadija, who was one of the tens of thousands who turned out on June 29th in Nanterre for a march in memory of Nahel. “Nothing”, she says, “justifies his killing.” Those present at the march expressed—at least initially—a calm but clear anger at the way they feel that the police treat them. “Officers need to be trained so that, when there are police checks, they don’t put the life of an under-aged boy in danger,” says Souleymane. Others are blunter. “The fundamental problem is that the police are racist,” says Habib.
The French police force is armed. In 2021, 37 people in France were killed during interventions by the police, according to the Inspection Générale de la Police Nationale, the police watchdog. The rate of police killings in France, at 3.8 per 10m people, is far below that in America, at 28.5 per 10m. Nonetheless, following a loosening in early 2017 (before Mr Macron’s election) of the rules governing the use of firearms in France, there does seem to have been an increase in deaths. In 2022, 13 people were killed during traffic checks, a record. Nahel’s was the third such death this year.
France does not collect ethnic statistics, so discrimination, in particular during routine identity checks, is hard to measure. But a growing list of studies points to a problem. An official report by Christian Vigouroux and Florian Roussel, commissioned by the interior ministry and published last year, examined efforts by the forces of law and order to combat bias. “Yes, there is discrimination in the police force,” said Mr Vigouroux, when presenting the report to the Senate.
France is now bracing itself for further violence. At a crisis meeting on June 29th Mr Macron called the violence of the previous night “unjustifiable”. (Some police unions are angry at his initial comments.) Nearly three weeks of widespread rioting in the banlieues in 2005, after two teenagers were killed when they sought refuge in an electricity sub-station while fleeing the police, ended only after a state of emergency was imposed. Things are not there yet. And so far Mr Macron has found the right words. Given the sense of anger, though, words may not be enough. ■
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