About the Violent Protests in Paris

Photo by Damien Checoury on Unsplash

Nahel M., 17, and his friend were stopped by Paris police officers last Tuesday. Nahel was driving a car with Polish plates, which his friend later said they had borrowed to drive around the city. The friend said they were in a bus lane when police stopped them. Nahel was not old enough to have a driver’s license.

According to reports, one officer told Nahel to cut the engine or he’d be shot; then, according to his friend, the officer hit Nahel with the butt of his gun. A second officer shot Nahel, who released his foot from the brake and onto the accelerator. The car hit a barrier. Afraid for his own life, the friend jumped out of the car and ran. Nahel succumbed to his gunshot wound.

A couple of obvious questions come to mind. Where did Nahel and his friend get the car they were driving? Was it really borrowed, or was it stolen?

The bigger question, though, is why the officer decided to shoot Nahel rather than issue a ticket or arrest him. Many people in and around Paris believe that Nahel’s race (he was Algerian) played a key role.

Following the release of video of the incident, Paris erupted into violent protests. During the heaviest day of rioting, roughly 1,300 people were arrested. A 24-year-old firefighter died battling a blaze deliberately set in an underground parking garage. More than 700 shops and markets in Paris had been looted or burned.

French President Emmanuel Macron immediately condemned the shooting of Nahel, but he laid a lot of the blame for the riots on social media users who wanted to hijack Nahel’s death as a reason to spark violence. He also faulted video games for creating situations that users sometimes choose to reenact in real life. (Yes, he actually said that.)

A lot of Parisians placed the blame directly on Macron himself as well as on France’s “color-blind approach” to public policy. Nahel was raised by his Algerian mother and lived in a section of Paris that is home to many African immigrants.

According to the Harvard International Review, “Rather than explicitly directing policy initiatives at specific minorities and racial groups, French policymakers focus their attention and efforts on geographic areas. The concentrated nature of low-income residents in particular neighborhoods enables the policymakers to address concrete economic needs without referring to race or ethnicity.

“Those who would like to change the ‘color-blind’ approach to policy note that, although there is a vast quantity of anti-discrimination laws in place within France, the lack of concrete racial data inhibits tangible change for communities of color. The absence of racial data makes it difficult to identify problem areas as well as to measure progress or regression since there is no benchmark of comparison.”

While French policy may encourage a color-blind approach, critics argue that the police are not always so color-blind. According to one resident of Nanterre, an area of Paris that is home to a large North African population, “the police are quite violent” with young teenagers. “If they get into trouble, the police can rough them up. So when kids see the police, they run because they are scared.”

A 2017 survey conducted by a French independent human rights organization found that young men of color were 20 times more likely to be stopped by police in France. Immigrants and working-class people are also often targeted by police, according to one French sociologist.

On the other side of this story are allegations that immigrants are responsible for a large portion of violent crime in France. Last year, two Algerian nationals were arrested and charged following the kidnap and rape of a 12-year-old Parisian girl. Didier Lallement, formerly the chief of police in Paris, wrote a book in which he stated that “one out of every two crimes are committed by a foreigner, often in an irregular situation.”

In 2022, France’s Interior Minister, Gérald Darmanin, said, “Forty-eight percent of people arrested for acts of delinquency in Paris, 55 percent in Marseille, and 39 percent in Lyon are foreigners. In France, foreigners represent 7.4 percent of the population. Of course, the foreigner is not by nature a criminal. But we have a problem with foreign delinquency.”

Contrast Darmanin’s assertions with a recent study by France’s Center for International Prospective Research and Data that claims "immigrants are not the cause of an increase in crime rates in host countries."

Will Nahel’s death encourage France to evaluate its policies, get a handle on what’s really going on with crime and force Paris police to review their treatment of immigrants? Before any of that can happen, the protests have to die down.

A couple of days ago, Nahel’s grandmother pleaded on French TV for an end to the violence. His family members say they don’t want riots to overshadow the need for justice for Nahel. By Monday, the streets of Paris were calmer; still, Parisians may be collectively holding their breath to see what happens next. We’ve seen this play out in the United States, and we know that resolutions are hard to come by.