NANTERRE, France (AP) – Young rioters clashed with police and looted shops on Friday in a fourth day of violence in France. The trigger was the deadly shooting of a teenager by the police. This increased pressure on President Emmanuel Macron after he appealed to parents to keep children away. They took to the streets, accusing social media of fueling the unrest.
According to the police, 270 people had been arrested nationwide by midnight.
Despite repeated government appeals for calm and stricter policing, there was also brazen daytime violence on Friday. In the eastern city of Strasbourg, an Apple store was looted where police used tear gas, and the windows of a fast-food joint were smashed in a Paris-area shopping center where officers fought off people trying to break into a shuttered shop , as the authorities called it.
The southern port city of Marseille, which was initially spared the violence that first erupted in the Paris region, experienced its second night of rioting. Before nightfall, young people threw projectiles, set fires and looted shops, police said. They arrested nearly 90 people. Looters broke into a gun shop in Marseille on Friday night and looted guns. A man was later arrested with a hunting rifle, police said. The night before, two off-duty officers sustained serious injuries, one of whom was stabbed, when they were attacked by about 20 people, police said.
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Authorities in the city of Lyon reported that rioters in the suburbs had set fires again and pelted the police. In the city center, police made 31 arrests in a bid to stop attempted looting of shops after about 1,300 people took part in an unauthorized protest against police violence on Friday night.
Violence also erupted in some French overseas territories.
Police officers patrol during clashes in the streets of Lyon June 30, 2023, three days after a 17-year-old boy was shot in the chest at point-blank range by police in Nanterre, a western Paris suburb. (JEFF PACHOUD / AFP)
In French Guiana, a 54-year-old man was killed by a stray bullet on Thursday night when rioters shot at police in the capital Cayenne, authorities said. On the small island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean, protesters set fire to garbage cans, threw projectiles at police and damaged cars and buildings, officials said. Around 150 officers were on duty there on Friday night.
Faced with the escalating crisis, which hundreds of arrests and massive police operations failed to quell, Macron refrained from declaring a state of emergency, an option used in 2005 under similar circumstances.
Instead, his administration stepped up the law enforcement response. The police forces, which have already been massively increased, were increased by a further 5,000 officers for Friday night, bringing the number to a total of 45,000, said the interior minister. Some have been recalled from vacation. Minister Gerald Darmanin said police made 917 arrests on Thursday alone, noting their young ages – an average of 17 years. He said more than 300 police officers and firefighters were injured.
Darmanin also ordered a nationwide overnight shutdown of all public buses and trams, which were among the targets of the rioters.
And he warned the social networks that they should not be misused as channels for calls for violence.
“They were very cooperative. We’ll see tonight if they really are. We will provide them with as much information as possible,” the minister said, so that the French authorities can in turn obtain the identities of those who incite violence.
“We will prosecute any person who uses these social networks to commit acts of violence,” he said. “And we will take all necessary action if we find that social networks, whoever they are, are not respecting the law.”
Macron, too, focused on social media platforms that had shared dramatic images of vandalism and cars and buildings set on fire, saying they played a “significant role” in the violence. He singled out Snapchat and TikTok, saying they are used to organize riots and serve as channels for copycat violence.
Macron said his government will work with tech companies to establish procedures for “the removal of the most sensitive content,” adding that he expects “a sense of responsibility” from them.
Snapchat spokeswoman Rachel Racusen said the company has increased its moderation since Tuesday to identify and respond to content related to the riots.
A French riot police officer walks during a demonstration in Paris June 30, 2023 after French police shot dead a teenage driver on June 27 in a Paris suburb. (Sameer Al-DOUMY / AFP)
The violence comes just over a year before Paris and other French cities will host 10,500 Olympians and millions of visitors to the Summer Olympics. Paris 2024 organizers said they are closely monitoring the situation and that preparations for the Olympics are ongoing.
The fatal shooting of the 17-year-old, identified only by his first name Nahel, was caught on video, shocking France and sparking long-simmering tensions between police and young people in housing projects and deprived neighborhoods.
Macron said a third of those arrested Thursday night were “young people, sometimes very young” and that it was “parents’ responsibility to keep their children at home.”
Nanterre prosecutor Pascal Prache said officers tried to stop Nahel because he looked so young and was driving a Mercedes with Polish number plates in a bus lane. He is said to have run a red light to avoid being stopped and then got stuck in a traffic jam.
A preliminary charge of first degree manslaughter was issued against the police officer accused of pulling the trigger, after Prache said his initial investigation led him to conclude that the officer’s use of his weapon was not legally justified. Preliminary charges mean coroners have strong suspicions of wrongdoing but still need to investigate further before bringing a case to court.
French President Emmanuel Macron speaks at the Interior Ministry in Paris, Friday June 30, 2023, following an emergency government meeting after the third straight night of unrest across the country. (Yves Herman/Pool via AP)
The officer said he feared he and his colleague or someone else could be hit by the car as Nahel tried to flee, prosecutors said.
Nahel’s mother, identified as Mounia M., told France 5 television that she was angry with the officer but not with the police in general. “He saw a little Arab-looking child, he wanted to take his own life,” she said, adding that justice must be “very strict”.
“A cop can’t take his gun and shoot our children, take our children’s lives,” she said.
The lethal use of firearms is less common in France than in the United States, although 13 people who failed to comply with traffic stops were fatally shot by French police last year.
That year, three other people, including Nahel, died in similar circumstances. The deaths have sparked calls for more accountability in France, which has also seen racial justice protests following the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota.
Nahel’s funeral is scheduled for Saturday, said Nanterre Mayor Patrick Jarry, who said France must “push for change” in disadvantaged neighborhoods.
The mother of slain 17-year-old Nahel, left on a truck, gestures during a march for Nahel on Thursday June 29, 2023 in Nanterre, outside Paris. (AP/Michel Euler)
For decades, race was a taboo subject in France, formally committed to a doctrine of color-blind universalism. After Nahel’s murder, French anti-racism activists again complained about the behavior of the police in general.
This week’s protests recalled the three-week riots in 2005 that followed the deaths of 15-year-old Bouna Traoré and 17-year-old Zyed Benna, who were electrocuted while standing at a substation in Clichy-sous-Bois hid from the police.