Thousands of protesters in Paris warn that there is no longer confidence in the French police

“Trust has been broken between the people and the police, we must reform the force from top to bottom,” warned this Saturday the thousands of participants in a protest in Paris against police violence and racism, which was joined by political parties. left, NGOs and even the magistracy union.

The demonstration, which started from the Gare du Nord railway station in the direction of Place de Clichy, also paid tribute to Nahel, the teenager of Maghreb origin shot at the end of June during a police check by an officer and whose death unleashed an intense wave of violence. in France.

Nearly 200 organizations—including parties, NGOs, unions, and student associations—attended the protest in the capital (15,000 participants, according to the organization).. It was the main one among the 120 summoned in France.

At the height of Boulevard Clichy, near the Sacred Heart, a bank branch was stoned and a police car was attacked by a group of people armed with iron bars.. Three of the four officers who were inside the car were slightly injured due to cervical trauma, detailed the Paris Police Prefect, Laurent Nuñez.

“The Parisian demonstration has experienced episodes of unacceptable violence against law enforcement forces. We already see what hatred against the police leads to,” Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin denounced on social media.

Shortly before the start of the protest, Mathilde Panot, the parliamentary leader of Insubordinate France (LFI), the third largest group in the Assembly, criticized Emmanuel Macron's government for its police management.

“The (UN) rapporteurs in favor of Human Rights have confirmed it: if you are a young person, who looks Arab or are black, you have 20 times more risk of being subjected to a police check than the average,” he criticized before a group of journalists.

Accompanied on the march by Aurélie Trouvé, also a member of the LFI, Panot denounced the “systemic racism” of the police against young people from popular neighborhoods, largely concentrated in the Parisian periphery, and warned that they are being made to feel ” a foreign body” within France, even though they are French.

The leader of the LFI in the Lower House calculated that in a single year and a half 17 people have died for refusing to stop at a police checkpoint, while in Germany, a country with which the French are often compared, there have been 1 in 10 years for ignoring a control, according to the deputy's figures.

For Panot, this Saturday is not a demonstration against the police force but in favor of a Republic in which State security forces and agents respect Human Rights.. “To do this, the institution must be reformed from top to bottom; trust between the people and the police has been broken,” he judged.

However, the latest polls show that nearly 60% of French people have a good opinion of police officers, a high percentage that has remained stable for some time.. Minister Darmanin has defended the role of agents, even in crises such as the one generated by Nahel's death.

More restrictions on the use of firearms

Several participants in the demonstration carried signs in favor of repealing a February 2017 law, approved by a socialist government with François Hollande as president and Bernard Cazeneuve as prime minister, which gave more leeway to agents to shoot with firearms in in case they feel threatened.

This law, which bears the name of Cazeneuve, was approved months after intense protests by the Police, who said they felt they had few means and were legally helpless to combat crime.

However, the fatal shooting by a police officer of the 17-year-old Nahel, who had refused to stop to undergo a check while driving a high-performance car without a driving license, has once again put the relevance of of that standard.

According to NGOs and magistrates' unions, there are other, less deadly ways to deal with a situation like this.

Among the organizations participating in the demonstration, the absence of two partners of France Insoumise in the leftist Nupes coalition stood out: the Socialist Party and the communists — the environmentalists did attend.

LFI's friction with the socialists but, above all, with the communists have been very frequent and have weakened Nupes ahead of the European elections in May 2024.

In the Paris march, an important union presence drew attention.

There was the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), the second center in France that mobilized intensely against the pension reform this first quarter, but also the magistrates' union, representative of 30% of the magistrates in the country.

This organization has asked for the repeal of a rule that allows police officers to use firearms when someone skips a checkpoint to avoid tragedies like the one that happened with Nahel.