Was this France’s “George Floyd moment”? Some in the country described it that way.
French police have come under scrutiny after a 17-year-old boy of Algerian and Moroccan descent identified as Nahel M. was shot and killed last week by a police officer as he attempted to flee a traffic stop in Nanterre, a Paris suburb. The incident led to riots across French cities, with hundreds of cars and buildings set on fire and looting, mostly by minors. Schools, city halls and police stations were attacked.
Over the weekend, rioters fired rockets at the suburban home of the mayor of one area of Paris, injuring his wife and children. Tens of thousands of police officers were deployed to try to restore calm. A heavy police response appeared to make an impact. As did an appeal on French TV made by the slain teenager’s grandmother, who urged rioters not to “smash windows, attack schools and buses. Stop. It is mothers who take those buses.”
By Tuesday, days of nationwide unrest appeared to ease and French President Emmanuel Macron, who since coming to power in 2017 has weathered a succession of protests and street unrest ranging from the so-called yellow vest movement for economic justice to anger over pension reform, was due to meet Tuesday with the mayors of over 220 towns and cities that have been concerned by incidents and damages in recent days.
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However, the United Nations has urged France’s authorities to see the riots as a “moment for the country to seriously address the deep issues of racism and racial discrimination in law enforcement.”
France’s police violence under the microscope
In fact, some media have referred to Nahel’s killing as reminiscent of Floyd’s murder by U.S. police.
Floyd, who died in May in 2020 in Minneapolis while in police custody, sparked demonstrations and unrest in scores of American cities. The episode led to a questioning about the role and scope of police in American life.
His killing unleashed a sweeping reckoning about everything from statues to sports teams names, from whether Black Americans would be safer moving overseas to louder, renewed calls for reparations.
“This act was committed by a law enforcement officer, was filmed and broadcast almost live and involved an emblematic representative of a socially discriminated category,” Le Monde newspaper wrote in an editorial.
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Following Nahel’s death, there have been calls by French activists for the country to address long-running allegations that its police engage in systematic racial profiling and are poorly trained to deal with the social and economic tensions affecting racial minorities in France’s so-called banlieues − the often bleak and poverty-stricken working class neighborhoods that ring French cities, where they disproportionately live.
Nanterre’s prosecutor’s office said that after an initial investigation, the police officer who fired the gun had been given a preliminary charge of “voluntary homicide” and remanded in custody.
A recent survey by the France-based Defenders of Rights organization found that 80% of young French men perceived to be Black or of Arab descent reported being stopped at least once by police in the last five years. This compares to about 16% of the population as a whole that reported being stopped over this time.
“What remains constant is a refusal by political powers to act on one of the factors of this explosive cocktail: the police,” historian Cedric Mas said on Twitter as the riots unfolded across France. “Riots in the U.S. and Britain in the 60s and 80s have led to deep reforms of the police. In France? Nothing for the past 40 years.”
Made in the U.S.A. but rehabilitated in France
One person who may be uniquely qualified to reflect on the riots that convulsed France is Melvin McNair, a 74-year-old Black American who has lived in exile there for decades after he hijacked a plane to flee U.S. racism and police violence. USA TODAY has previously written in detail about McNair’s complex story.
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After serving time in prison in France, McNair retrained as a social worker and devoted his life to mentoring troubled French youth. The kids he mentored are similar to the ones who have been participating in this latest bout of unrest in France. France’s Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Monday that the average age of the 3,200 people arrested was just 17.
Some as young as 12 years old have been setting fires in the streets of France.
McNair, who is retired, is still wanted by the U.S. Department of Justice for his role in the hijacking of Delta Flight 841 in 1972. But in his social worker job, he came into frequent contact with both France’s policing system and the country’s disadvantaged kids from the banlieues. He is known in France as “Mr. Baseball” because he often used the sport as way to get through to kids who had little respect for authority or government institutions.
In an interview, he said there was no question the country’s police needed reform. He said police needed more skills and training to know how to respond to youths in underprivileged communities who have “lost all hope” and often flirt, to various degrees, with various kinds of criminality. However, McNair was reluctant to describe French police, as many French commentators and experts have in recent days, as institutionally or systemically racist.
“There are many police officers in France who are racist, who have extreme right-wing views, who are opposed to immigration and don’t want more Muslims here. But it’s not everywhere,” said McNair.
“There’s police that are frustrated, too. They want to find solutions,” he added.
McNair was also reluctant to draw direct comparisons between racially tinged police violence in the U.S. and France, though he views U.S. police violence against minorities as far more entrenched and problematic.
He ascribed some of this reluctance to his view that comparing countries with different histories, behaviors and social contexts just isn’t that illuminating.
Collecting race-based statistics is illegal in France as part of its so-called color-blind laws, but it’s estimated that out of a population of 68 million, France has about 6 million residents of Arab descent and 4 million Black people.
Nahel’s was the third fatal shooting by French police during a traffic stop this year, according to French media. In the U.S., last year, 86 people were killed during traffic stops, according to an analysis by the BBC that used data from Mapping Police Violence, a public database that tracks the work of law enforcement. Black people are almost three times as likely to be killed by police than white people in the U.S., according to the database.
Still, McNair said the situation with France’s police “was not getting better,” and that there needed to be a wholesale revamping of the overall the balance between “education, prevention and repression.”
He said it “boils down to haves and have nots.”
This is cold comfort to Nahel’s family.
“I don’t blame the police,” his mother Mounia M., told France 5 television.
“I blame the man who took my son’s life …. He saw the face of an Arab, a little kid, and wanted to take his life.”
