The deadly police shooting at a teenage motorist on Tuesday in a Paris suburb followed years of allegations of violence and brutality against police in France.
Beatings by officers and deaths in custody have brought police tactics under closer scrutiny, prompting protests against the use of force, particularly against people of color.
Here are some of the most famous cases:
Michel Zecler
Michel Zecler, a French music producer, in his studio in Paris in 2020. Source: Mauricio Lima for The New York Times
In November 2020, police officers punched, kicked and punched Michel Zecler, a 41-year-old French music producer, for six minutes in the narrow entrance of his studio in Paris.
Mr Zecler told the New York Times that officers also used racial slurs against him.
After video of the beating was released on social media, the French government rewrote a provision into a security law that would have restricted police officers from filming. The provision was ultimately rejected by the French Constitutional Council.
Cedric Chouviat
Cédric Chouviat’s family led a protest near the Eiffel Tower in Paris in 2021 to mark the first anniversary of his death. Credit: Kiran Ridley/Getty Images
In January 2020, officers stopped Cédric Chouviat, a 42-year-old delivery man, near the Eiffel Tower in Paris. He died after officers pinned him to the ground and put him in a choke hold. An autopsy revealed that he had a fractured larynx.
As police held him down, Mr Chouviat said, “I’m suffocating,” seven times, according to footage cited in an internal police report.
Theodore Luhaka
In 2017, police arrested 22-year-old Théodore Luhaka while verifying the identity of a group of young men they suspected of drug trafficking.
In the days that followed, Mr. Luhaka said that the officers insulted and beat him, and that one of them “took his baton and poked it in my buttocks.” He was hospitalized with bruises and serious injuries to his rectum.
The officers are due to appear in court next year.
Adama Traore
A protester with a portrait of Adama Traoré in Persan, France, in 2020 to mark the fourth anniversary of Mr Traoré’s death. Credit: Kiran Ridley/Getty Images
In 2016, Frenchman Adama Traoré died of asphyxiation after escaping an ID check and being arrested by three officers on his 24th birthday.
One of the officers later admitted that the three had imposed “the weight of our entire body” on Mr. Traoré.
His sister Assa Traoré has become a spokeswoman for The Truth for Adama, an advocacy group demanding justice for Mr Traoré and organizing some of the largest anti-racism protests in Europe.
It is still unclear whether the officials face a process.
Zyed Benna and Bouna Traore
Photos of Zyed Benna (left) and Bouna Traoré in Clichy-Sous-Bois, outside Paris, in 2006. Credit: Christophe Ena/Associated Press
In 2005, two teenagers – Zyed Benna, 17, and Bouna Traoré, 15 – died while hiding in a substation while fleeing police in an impoverished suburb north of Paris.
Her death by electrocution sparked major riots in the Paris suburbs that spread to cities and towns across France.
The weeks of unrest stemmed from long-standing complaints of discrimination, lack of opportunity and police harassment in immigrant-dense French suburbs. Hundreds of young people set fire to cars and buildings and destroyed bus stops. The protests became the largest unrest in the country in at least a decade.
In 2015, two police officers were acquitted of failing to prevent the youths’ deaths.