Riots in France for the third night in a row over police shooting

(Patria) - Riots have spread to larger cities in France for the third night in a row, as President Emmanuel Macron struggled to contain a growing crisis caused by police shooting a teenager of Algerian and Moroccan origin during a traffic stop.

Forty thousand police officers have been deployed across France, nearly four times the number mobilized on Wednesday, but there were few signs that government calls for de-escalation of violence would quell the widespread anger, Reuters reports.

In Nanterre, a working-class town in the western suburbs of Paris where 17-year-old Nahel M. was killed on Tuesday, protesters set fire to cars, barricaded streets, and threw projectiles at police after a peaceful vigil. A bank was set on fire, and a Nike shoe store was broken into in the center of Paris.

14 people were arrested, and another 16 were arrested with stolen goods after shop windows were smashed along the shopping street Rue de Rivoli, the Paris police announced.

The national police announced on Thursday evening that officers faced new incidents in Marseille, Lyon, Pau, Toulouse, and Lille, including fires and fireworks. The incident has fueled long-standing complaints about police violence and systemic racism within law enforcement agencies from human rights groups and within the racially mixed, low-income suburbs around major French cities.

The local prosecutor said the police officer involved had been placed under official investigation for manslaughter and would be held in preventive detention.

“The public prosecutor considers that the legal conditions for the use of weapons were not met,” said prosecutor Pascal Prache.

The teenager was shot on Tuesday. He initially did not stop after the Mercedes AMG he was driving was spotted in a bus lane. Two police officers caught up with the car in a traffic jam. When the car tried to flee, the officer shot through the driver's window at close range. Nahel died from a single shot to the left arm and chest, said Nanterre public prosecutor Pascal Prache.

The police officer admitted to firing the fatal shot, the prosecutor said, telling investigators that he wanted to prevent a car chase, fearing that he or another person would be injured after the teenager allegedly committed several traffic violations.

The police officer's lawyer, Laurent-Franck Lienard, said his client had asked the victim's family for forgiveness. He said the officer had aimed for the driver's leg but was hit, causing him to shoot towards his chest.

“He had to be stopped, but obviously (the officer) did not want to kill the driver,” Lienard told BFM TV, adding that his client's detention was being used to try to calm the rioters.

Nahel was known to the police for previously failing to comply with traffic stop orders, Prache said.

Macron said on Wednesday that the shooting was inexcusable. Convening an emergency meeting, he also condemned the riots. At a march in Nanterre to commemorate Nahel, participants protested against what they saw as a culture of police impunity and a failure to reform law enforcement in a country that has experienced waves of riots and protests over police conduct.

The riots have revived memories of the 2005 riots that shook France for three weeks and forced then-President Jacques Chirac to declare a state of emergency. That wave of violence broke out in the Parisian suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois and spread across the country after the deaths of two young men who were electrocuted in a power substation while hiding from the police.

The two police officers were acquitted of charges in a trial 10 years later.
Tuesday's killing was the third fatal shooting during a traffic stop in France in 2023, compared to a record 13 last year, a national police spokesperson said.