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Attacks on police officers are on the rise: a protester throws a tear gas grenade at police officers in a demonstration. Image: keystone
More and more attacks: youth gangs chase policemen in the banlieue
In the problem areas of Paris, the police can hardly guarantee peace and order: they have to protect themselves from attacks.
It was shortly before midnight and two policemen were taking a smoking break in front of the Champigny-sur-Marne police station when the mob attacked. Around forty young people ran with iron bars, fireworks and petanque balls.
The two flics were able to escape through the entrance lock and close the door at the last minute. “Otherwise, there would have been deaths,” a police union said later.
Because the attackers were unable to grab a police officer, they hit several police cars ready to be scrapped. At the same time, they ignited powerful pyrotechnic grenades, which make an awful noise in the ravines between the residential towers and carry them up to 150 meters. The besieged policemen defended themselves against the first-floor windows with tear gas, without doing much.
The concert on Saturday night lasted until police reinforcements arrived from neighboring communities. Eventually, the masked people withdrew to the surrounding apartment towers. No one was arrested at the moment.
Powerless Policy Reactions
Instead, video scenes of the attack were immediately circulated on the internet. They caused outrage across the country on Monday. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin declared that “he was not impressed by these little captains”; rather, it is considering banning fireworks. That seemed as powerless as the Elysee Palace announcement that President Emmanuel Macron would receive police representatives for a debate on Thursday.
Police union member Grégory Joron said at a small police demonstration in front of the attacked police station: “I listen to full-bodied statements from politicians describing such attacks as unacceptable. They never really follow words with deeds. “His colleague Eddy Deboste added:” The hatred of the Flics increases all the time. Now they come to kill too. “
Members of the French police union demonstrate in Paris on October 12, 2020 after a police station was attacked. Image: keystone
He wasn’t just referring to the attack on Champigny. Less than a week ago, three suspected smugglers in Herblay-sur-Seine, another Paris suburb, brutally attacked two policemen in their vehicle and confiscated their pistols. A policeman was shot twice, his colleague was fighting death with four shots to the body.
With Kalashnikovs through urbanization.
According to the daily “Le Parisien”, 30 police officers are victims of attacks or assaults every day in France. Nighttime ambushes are popular: Often minors, children deprived of their liberty, sometimes incited by drug traffickers, set cars or trash cans on fire, and then covered the approaching firefighters and police with all kinds of projectiles.
In August, in the French Alpine metropolis of Grenoble, hooded merchants were filmed patrolling a “cité” (housing estate) with Kalashnikovs, presumably to mark their territory against another gang and the police.
In the raid on the Champigny police station, it does not appear that the merchants were primarily working. The trigger was possibly a police check in which a fleeing moped driver was injured. This shows how tense the situation is in these residential areas and how little it takes to let it flare up.
Drug gangs offer regular income
The crisis of the crown is aggravating the social misery in these neighborhoods. Unemployment increases, drug gangs offer a regular livelihood: fourteen or fifteen-year-olds drop out of school because they earn 50 euros a day at their guard post at the entrance to the “cité”.
Others fall into the hands of the Salafists, some of whom trade themselves. The boundaries are fluid, as Champigny’s own police officers know: their police station, the only one for the community’s 78,000 residents, is located in a dilapidated apartment block where merchants come and go.
These intolerable conditions are no secret in France. Macron has long spoken of the “recovery of the territories lost by the republic.” In Champigny, the number of police officers increased from 25 to 160. This has not changed anything.
Police unionist Linda Kebbab, of Algerian parents, said that young people from the banlieue respect the police less, as they are increasingly accused of violence and racism. (bzbasel.ch)
