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How should France respond to protests against alleged racist policing?

By Christina Okello - RFI
France AFP - LIONEL BONAVENTURE
JUN 13, 2020 LISTEN
AFP - LIONEL BONAVENTURE

Outcry over the killing of George Floyd in the US has resonated in France's deprived city suburbs, where largely immigrant communities have long complained of police brutality. The government has vowed "zero tolerance" of racism in the police force. Experts say bringing back community policing could help tackle bias.

In 2003, almost fifteen years before a dispute over an identity check that would cost young black Frenchman Adama Traoré his life, former interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy made a trip to Toulouse in southern France to evaluate a pilot community policing programme.

Sarkozy, who later became president on a tough-on-crime stance, found little to be pleased with in the conduct of the community police officers whom he met.

“You are not here to organise rugby matches but to stop offenders!” he said. Within a few months the pilot programme in Toulouse and in other cities was scrapped.

“Sarkozy scolded the officers for not making enough arrests and not getting enough results,” explains Christian Mouhanna, a researcher at France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and a police specialist.

“Yet these officers were doing interesting things with the youth, and were playing a vital role in establishing dialogue between police and young people,” he tells RFI.

Riots

Those ties have steadily weakened over the years – notably in 2005, when two boys of African and North African descent were killed, electrocuted after running into a power transformer while trying to escape police. Their death triggered three weeks of riots in Paris suburbs.

Despite billions of euros in government improvement programmes for the suburbs, or banlieues, since 2005, tensions with police persist.

In 2016, the death of 24-year-old Traoré in police custody rekindled public anger at perceived police racism.

While France famously doesn't compile official statistics based on race, ethnicity or religion, a study by the CNRS has shown that black people are 11.5 times more likely to be checked by police than white people, and those of Arab origin seven times more likely.

Profiling

Efforts to clamp down on illegal immigration may be fuelling racial discrimination, suggests Mouhanna.

“Police officers are asked to arrest a large number of undocumented migrants each year so that the government can show it's tackling illegal immigration,” he says.

In 2019, more than 23,700 people were deported from France, an increase of 19 percent.

“Profiling disproportionately targets people with dark skin or who look north-African,” continues Mouhanna. “But not everyone who is black or of Arab origin is here illegally.”

In a landmark 2016 case, France's highest court ruled for the first time that police had illegally stopped three men based on racial profiling.

Trust crisis

On Monday, Jacques Toubon, France's human rights ombudsman, raised the alarm over a "crisis of public confidence in the security forces". 

His report came after thousands demonstrated in Paris and across France against police brutality, demanding justice for Adama Traoré, whose death has been brought back to public attention by the killing in the United States of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer.

Rejecting allegations of systemic racism, Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said he had "heard the call against hatred" and that "racism has no place in our society, in our Republic”.

“I refuse to say that the police institution is racist. But yes, some police officers are racist,” he said on Monday, vowing a zero-tolerance approach to racism within the force. 

In response to allegations of police violence, Castaner also announced a ban on the use of chokeholds by officers. 

His comments drew the ire of police officers who staged two days of protests against the accusations.

For former justice minister Christiane Taubira, one of only a handful of high-ranking black ministers to have served under France's five republics, “One slip-up tarnishes the entire institution.”

'Understanding those you police'

On the question of undocumented migrants, Taubira, along with other activists, wants law enforcement authorities to give out a "récépissé" or receipt to asylum seekers, after each identity check.

So far, the message has fallen on deaf ears.
“Governments are fearful of being labelled as lax by the right and extreme right,” comments Mouhanna. "They are totally paralysed. 

"Tackling crime is not only about force, it is about communicating and understanding the people you police.”

For Mouhanna, who in 2011 penned the book Are the police against citizens? ignorance is to blame for sometimes discriminatory and violent actions of French police.

“Often the police associate certain areas with only crime and poverty, they see just the dark side,” he comments, referring to recent racist comments posted by police officers on a private Facebook group.

Ending prejudice

To break stereotypes, Mouhanna argues for a return to community policing that was first set up by Socialist leader Lionel Jospin in 1998.

Under the government of Emmanuel Macron, officers do patrol the streets but their role is limited to “reducing the feeling of insecurity among French people” as opposed to dialogue. And none are stationed in troubled areas.

Their absence is felt today. In Toulouse, one bar owner told French daily La Depeche that contact with the police is “not the same as it was” since community policing ended and that many residents miss having an officer who listens to them.

Rebuilding trust will require understanding, suggests Mouhanna. Then progress can begin. 

“When you understand the history of the people you're policing – what pushes them to crime, and that out of a family of three, only one child may be an offender – when you get to that level, you will no longer need to hold onto prejudice,” he said.

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