November 7. Riots are still erupting in France’s major cities, the fourth weekend in a row, perhaps only slightly less destructive than before. On October 19, the government imposed a curfew in many cities, then sent in police and water cannons. More than 3,000 shops — including several supermarkets — have been looted or destroyed. Stores that survived had boarded up their doors and windows, transforming the centers of Paris, Lyon, Marseille and other cities into bleak, barren ghost towns.
The police, now mobilized to the limit, cannot indefinitely sustain this level of deployment. Their numbers are not unlimited, and individual officers cannot remain on duty without sleep. Police officers also cannot be expected to endure increasingly extreme violence. Since October 17, more than 2,000 officers have been wounded — some severely — and the numbers continue to rise. On October 31, firebombs were hurled at police officers, engulfing them in flames. The police were forced to retreat — in fact, flee. Even the firefighters trying to extinguish the flames were attacked.
French police officers have been given orders that no rioter should be harmed, even those who directly threaten the life of an officer. Should a rioter be killed, authorities would view it as a major catastrophe — perhaps triggering a wider uprising across the country — and to defuse the situation, the officers responsible would almost certainly be imprisoned. Every police officer is aware of what happened to Florian M., the officer who, while attempting to arrest Nahel Merzouk, a young criminal of Arab descent, on June 27, 2023, accidentally killed him: The officer was arrested and charged with intentional homicide.
The French police also see that arresting rioters is futile. All rioters — even the most violent — enjoy virtually total impunity. Of the nearly 5,000 rioters who have been arrested since October 17, almost all were released within a few hours, free to resume rioting. To date, around 200 have been brought before a judge and fewer than half have been convicted.
