Teen’s killing raises a French policing issue that dare not be named

On Friday, just a few days after a French police officer shot dead a teenager during a traffic stop in a Paris suburb, the UN Human Rights Office urged France to tackle racial discrimination.

“We are concerned by the killing of a 17-year-old of North African descent by police in France,” UN human rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told a press briefing in Geneva.

“This is a moment for the country to seriously address the deep issues of racism and discrimination in law enforcement,” she added.

Shamdasani’s comments echoed innumerable statements released over the past few years by international rights groups, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, calling on the French state to address “systematic discrimination” particularly “the use of ethnic profiling” during identity checks.

If the UN human rights office believed the police killing of the teenager of Algerian descent, named Nahel M., could be the “moment” for an official French reckoning, it proved to be mistaken.

Shortly after the press conference in Geneva, the French foreign ministry released a statement rejecting the UN’s accusation of racism among its police. “Any accusation of racism or systemic discrimination in the police force in France is totally unfounded,” the foreign ministry said.

Race is a thorny issue in France, a nation that has become multi-ethnic since World War II and the subsequent decolonisation of several African and Asian countries.

The atrocities committed during World War II – including the complicity of the Vichy regime in deporting French Jews to Nazi concentration camps – continue to haunt the issue of ethnic and racial identity in France. The post-war state that emerged from the ashes of World War II is officially colour blind, grants equality to all its citizens, and tends to address social inequalities using class or geographic criteria.

But in the geographic neighbourhoods that experience the worst of police brutality and discrimination, that argument fails to persuade ethnically diverse residents.

Many cases, same message on policing

Nahel’s killing in the western Paris suburb of Nanterre was the latest in a string of cases of police violence in France’s deprived, multi-ethnic banlieues, or suburbs. These include high-profile cases, such as the 2005 deaths of two young men in Clichy-sous-Bois, a Paris suburb, and the 2016 death of Adama Traoré in Val d’Oise, a banlieue further north. The victims were all non-white young males.

At a demonstration in Nanterre two days after Nahel’s death, protesters told journalists they were there to voice their horror over the killing of a teen they never knew, but who was “like” them. “Nahel could have been my brother,’’ a young woman of North African origin told the New York Times. “He was a nonwhite person in this country … Nonwhite people are targeted by the police.”

It’s an allegation that has been frequently repeated at anti-police brutality protests across France over the past few years.

Back in 2020, when the death of George Floyd sparked Black Lives Matter protests across the US, similar demonstrations erupted in France.

Floyd’s killing by a white police officer in Minneapolis evoked comparisons with the case of 24-year-old Traoré, whose death while in police custody in July 2016 sparked days of clashes in the suburbs. Two autopsies and four separate medical examinations have offered conflicting reasons for Traoré’s death, with his family maintaining that he suffocated under the weight of the three officers who used a controversial technique to restrain him.

“Of course France and America are very different countries, but they have a common enemy: racism,” a demonstrator told FRANCE 24 at a June 2020 “Justice for Adama Traoré” protest. “Nothing will ever change until people are educated about racism. Starting with the police.”

One bad apple, not the orchard

The message on the streets is frequently criticised by French government officials, security experts and police union representatives.

No evidence has emerged so far that Nahel was singled out by the police because of his race. The police officer, who was recorded in a video clip shooting into the yellow Mercedes at point blank range, has been charged on two counts: voluntary homicide and “lying” in his initial account that the car had tried to run down the police officers.

Speaking to reporters after Nahel’s killing, French Justice Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti chastised protesters and activists calling for systemic changes in law enforcement agencies.

“The case is against a police officer, not the police in general. This lumping of them all together is intolerable,” said Dupond-Moretti.

Several French officials and security experts conceded that the video footage appeared to show the policeman acting in breach of procedures. But they insist it’s a case of one bad apple, not a rot in the orchard.

“I understand the anger, losing a 17-year-old is tragic. But I think the way the procedure is going, it’s going in the right direction. I think we’re facing a policeman who acted badly, who’s not representative of the whole police force,” André Rakoto, a defence and security analyst at Paris 8 university, told FRANCE 24’s The Debate show.

His fellow panelist, Inès Seddiki, a French-Moroccan activist and founder of GHETT’UP, an NGO working in Paris’s deprived banlieues, disagreed.

“I don’t agree with the justice minister that this officer is on trial, it’s not the whole police. I disagree. I think it’s the whole police,” said Seddiki. “I think it’s a structural problem that we should try to address.”

At war with rioting ‘vermin’

The official position that the police force does not have a discrimination problem because racism has no place in a republic proclaiming equality exasperates academics and activists working in the field.

Reacting to the foreign ministry’s statement that the UN call on France to address police was “unfounded”, Fraser McQueen, a French studies lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, did not mince his words.

“First of all, the denial that there isn’t any systemic racism in the institution of the police is really unconscionable in my view,” said McQueen.

“It’s been consistently picked up on by bodies like France’s ombudsman and by non-governmental organisations like the Open Society, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. In last year’s presidential election, certain figures calculated that as many as 68% of French police officers voted for far-right candidates. So, this idea that there is no systemic racism is just incorrect, it’s false,” he noted.

Studies have consistently shown a rise in the far-right vote among France’s security establishment.

A July 2019 study by the left-leaning Fondation Jean–Jaurès found that more than 50% of French military and law enforcement personnel said they voted for far-right politician Marine Le Pen’s party in recent elections.

In the first round of the 2022 presidential election, 39% of police and military personnel voted for Le Pen while 25% voted for another far-right candidate, Éric Zemmour, according to polling institute Cluster17.

Police unions have come under particular scrutiny following Nahel’s killing. Following consecutive nights of unrest last week, unions representing half of France’s police on Friday said they were at war with “vermin” rioting in many cities.

“Today police officers are at the front line because we are at war,” the Alliance Police Nationale and UNSA Police unions said in a statement echoing a far-right discourse. “Faced with these savage hordes, it’s no longer enough to call for calm, it must be imposed,” they added.

Friday’s police union statement sounded emollient compared to a tweet posted by France Police, a far-right union, shortly after Nahel’s death hit the headlines in France.

“Congratulations to the colleagues who opened fire on a young 17-year-old criminal. By neutralising his vehicle, they protected their lives and those of other drivers. The only ones responsible for this thug’s death are his parents, who were incapable of educating their son,” it read.

The tweet has since been deleted, and French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has said he will seek the dissolution of the small far-right union.

‘People are scared of the police’

Law enforcement officials and their representatives frequently cite the increasing dangers of their job amid rising levels of anti-police animosity particularly in the banlieues.

“Look at the context. In the last ten years, we’ve had twice more refusals to comply than in the previous period. Things are getting difficult to handle for the police forces,” said Rakoto.   

A 2017 law allowing French police to fire on people failing to make a traffic stop if they posed a future danger has come under severe criticism over the past week.

The law, which was passed following a spate of terror attacks in France, has been slammed as a “licence to shoot” legislation. In 2022 alone, 13 people were shot and killed by police in cases of non-compliance. While French authorities have not released the racial or ethnic identities of the victims, sociologist Sebastien Roche told a local French daily that there was an “overrepresentation of ethnic minorities among those killed during refusals to obey” police traffic stops. 

When confronted with statistics of increasing cases of people in cars refusing to stop when asked to by the police, Seddiki said it was indicative of a lack of public trust in the police.

“I think what this means is that people are scared of the police more and more. People don’t think the police will be able to have a fair judgment in some situations. So they prefer to flee or face fines or be prosecuted instead of complying with a stop-and-frisk, for example, or with a traffic control. That’s something we should take into consideration because the police is meant to protect people and not scare people,” she said.

Days after Nahel’s killing shocked the nation, a law-and-order discourse has dominated the headlines following consecutive nights of rioting. It has swiftly superseded the initial expressions of outrage over the teenager’s killing. Many fear the real lessons of the tragic loss of a young life will not be learned as the numbers of police officers on duty and arrests mount – until the figures decrease and the news cycle moves on.

“What we’ve seen over the past few days is a lot of discourse about law and order, about restoring order, about how awful this violence is,” said Ariane Basthard-Bogain, a lecturer in French and politics at Northumbria University. “What we haven’t heard is a discussion of the structural causes of all of this and a long-term solution from it by the authorities. So, it’s very much framed as a violent uprising. But what we really need to focus on is why it was created in the first place.

That is a question the French establishment has been reluctant to address since a world war, a genocide and anti-colonial struggles shook the country in the previous century, locking the nation in an official equality that overlooks the experiences of many minorities today.