French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday, June 30, announced measures including more police and urged parents to keep minors off the streets as he battled to contain nightly riots over a teenager's fatal shooting by an officer in a traffic stop,
Le Monde reports.
There had been "unacceptable exploitation of a death of an adolescent" in some neighborhoods to justify the violence, Macron said after rushing back from an EU summit to chair a second crisis meeting in two days.
Stopping short of announcing a state of emergency as urged by the right and far right, Macron attempted to strike a balance between political pressure for a harsh response and fears of triggering a still stronger backlash.
A state of emergency would allow curfews to be imposed and public places to be closed. The measure was used in by the government in 2005 during the riots that erupted in Clichy-sous-Bois after the deaths of two teenagers, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré, who were electrocuted inside an electrical substation while trying to escape the police.
"Additional means" would be mobilised by the interior ministry to tackle the rioting, Macron said. Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne later said police will use armoured vehicles to suppress riots. "Additional mobile forces" would be deployed along with the vehicles belonging to France's gendarmerie, Borne said, also announcing the cancellation of "large-scale events binding personnel and potentially posing risks to public order".
The 40,000 officers deployed nationwide on Thursday failed to prevent damage to a total of 492 structures, 2,000 vehicles being burned and 3,880 fires started nationwide, according to government figures he had earlier read out as the meeting got started. Latest interior ministry figures on Friday detailed 875 arrests overnight, while 249 police officers were injured – none of them seriously.
