France’s government vowed to restore order on Thursday after two nights of urban violence triggered by the deadly police shooting of a 17-year-old, announcing it would deploy tens of thousands more officers and crack down on neighbourhoods where buildings and vehicles were torched.
Ministers fanned out to areas scarred by the sudden flare-up of rioting, appealing for calm but also warning that the violence that injured scores of police and damaged nearly 100 public buildings wouldn’t be allowed to continue.
After a morning crisis meeting, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said policing will be more than quadrupled — from 9,000 officers to 40,000. In the Paris region alone, the number of officers deployed will more than double to 5,000.
“The professionals of disorder must go home,” Darmanin said. While there’s no need yet to declare a state of emergency — a measure taken to quell weeks of rioting in 2005, he added: “The state’s response will be extremely firm.”
Clamart, home to 54,000 people in the French capital’s southwest suburbs, said it would be imposing an overnight curfew starting at 9 p.m., until Monday.
The police officer who fired the fatal shot that killed the teen, Nahel, in the Paris suburb of Nanterre was handed a preliminary charge of voluntary homicide on Thursday. A lawyer for Nahel’s family, Yassine Bouzrou, told The Associated Press they want the officer prosecuted for murder.
The killing of Nahel, identified only by his first name, came during a traffic stop on Tuesday. The incident captured on video shocked the country and stirred up long-simmering tensions between police and young people in housing projects and other disadvantaged neighbourhoods.
Despite a beefed-up police presence on Wednesday night, violence resumed after dusk in Nanterre, with protesters shooting fireworks and hurling stones at police, who fired repeated volleys of tear gas.
Vandalism spreads
As demonstrations spread to other towns, police and firefighters struggled to contain protesters and extinguish numerous blazes. Schools, police stations, town halls and other public buildings were damaged from Toulouse in the south to Lille in the north — with most of the damage in the Paris suburbs, according to a spokesperson for the national police.
Fire damaged the town hall in the Paris suburb of L’Île-Saint-Denis, not far from the country’s national stadium and the headquarters of the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Darmanin said 170 officers had been injured in the unrest but that none of the injuries was life-threatening. At least 90 public buildings were vandalized. The number of civilians injured was not immediately released.
French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin surveys the damage in Mons-en-Baroeul in northern France, following rioting across the country after police shot and killed a teenage boy in a Paris suburb earlier in the week.
The town hall, a social centre, a school and several vehicles were damaged or destroyed by vandals throwing objects and setting fires in Mons-en-Baroeul in northern France. Darmanin toured the community on Thursday and condemned the violence.
“The government’s response will be extremely firm and, from this evening, everyone must understand that public order will be restored,” he said.
Prosecutor says teen was stuck in traffic
Pascal Prache, the Nanterre prosecutor, said officers tried to stop Nahel because he looked so young and was driving a Mercedes with Polish licence plates in a bus lane. He ran a red light to avoid being stopped but then got stuck in a traffic jam. Both officers involved said they drew their guns to prevent him from fleeing.
The officer who fired a single shot said he feared he and his colleague or someone else could be hit by the car, Prache said. The officers said they felt “threatened” as the car drove off.
Prache requested the officer be held in custody — a decision to be made by a magistrate.
Two magistrates have been named to lead the investigation, Prache said. Under the French legal system, which differs from the U.S. and British systems, magistrates often lead investigations.
Nahel’s surname has not been released by authorities or by his family. In earlier statements, lawyers for the family spelled the name Nael. His mother is Algerian and father Moroccan, according to an acquaintance of the family.
In a separate case, a police officer who fatally shot a 19-year-old Guinean man in western France has preliminarily been charged with voluntary homicide, the local prosecutor said on Wednesday. The man was fatally shot by an officer as he allegedly tried to flee a traffic stop. The investigation is still ongoing.
Scenes of violence in France’s suburbs echo 2005, when the deaths of 15-year-old Bouna Traoré and 17-year-old Zyed Benna led to three weeks of nationwide riots, exposing anger and resentment in neglected, crime-ridden suburban housing projects.
The two boys were electrocuted after hiding from police in a power substation in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois.
French President Emmanuel Macron held an emergency security meeting on Thursday about the violence. “These acts are totally unjustifiable,” he said at the beginning of the meeting.
Macron also said it was time for “remembrance and respect” as Nahel’s mother called for a silent march on Thursday that drew a large crowd to the square where her son was killed.
Some marchers had “Justice for Nahel” printed on the front of their T-shirts. “The police kill” read one marcher’s placard. Bouquets of orange and yellow roses now mark the site of the shooting, on Nanterre’s Nelson Mandela Square.
French activists renewed calls to tackle what they see as systemic police abuse, particularly in neighbourhoods like the one where Nahel lived, where many residents struggle with poverty and racial or class discrimination.
Video of shooting
Videos of the shooting shared online show two police officers leaning into the driver-side window of a yellow car before the vehicle pulls away as one officer fires into the window. The videos show the car later crashed into a post nearby.
The driver died at the scene, the prosecutor’s office said.
Violent protests resumed for the second night in Nanterre, France, as unrest over the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old at a traffic stop continues to boil over. Protesters aimed fireworks at police, who responded with rounds of tear gas, as firefighters worked to control the blazing cars lining the streets.
The most recent government statistics available show that 17 people were killed after police and gendarmerie officers shot at them in 2021.
Asked about police abuses, Macron said justice should be allowed to run its course.
French soccer star Kylian Mbappé, who grew up in the Paris suburb of Bondy, was among many shocked by what happened.
“I hurt for my France,” he posted on Twitter.