Police and racism in France” is the title of the document retained by the French Government. The scientific assembly of the inter-ministerial delegation against racism was written in July 2021, but government members agreed to its accession in silence. This summer the left-wing media L’Humanité published it in full, referring to this report Charlie Hebdo. “Collect the work of the months. A group of policemen, researchers and association leaders agree to talk about the painful issue at the heart of the republic. Did we have to throw it all away? It’s unacceptable,” says sociologist Smain Laacher, among researchers. It is clear: “Morally and politically, it was a mistake not to publish the report.” The drowning of African-American
George Floyd by the US Police generated worldwide anger in May 2020. It was then that Laacher decided to put the issue in the French Police, to clarify whether there could also be talk of systemic racism “This clear day murder has brought the world of systematic racism,” said President Joe Bide the day after Floyd’s murder.

Disaggregated annexes is a seven-page document based on 21 interviews. They have listened to many relevant police officers, including the inspector of the Directorate General of the National Police DGPN and several officials of the Police Schools. Although the report says that there is no systemic racism, it affirms the presence of racism: the existence of “racist police” and, in general, the lack of an adequate approach to prevent racism in police training and monitoring.

In addition to withholding the report, the government dissolved in January this year the scientific assembly on which it is based. “With this dismantling without any explanation, the Government has clearly shown us that it renounces any debate and criticism. An excellent example of intellectual cowardice,” says Laache.

High, the problem is becoming increasingly apparent. The racist violent attitudes that bring to light the video recordings; the racist demonstrations of the Whatsapp police groups; the significant results of the far-right Alliance police union, which won 49.45% of the votes in December, along with the candidature of Unsa Police; the tests of controls based on the appearance suffered by the Banlieues or the popular neighbours … all the problems of the police in France. Basically, according to the survey conducted by Yougov in July, seven out of ten citizens believe that's the case. United Nations warns Paris on 30 June: “It’s time to look at the deep problems of racism and discrimination among policemen.” The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ravina Shamdasani, was in charge of igniting the alarm. She was soon heavily criticized and the government called her statements “unfounded.”

Law enforcement

In January 2021, six agents asked the French Government for measures to end discriminatory controls. These include NGOs Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch and various neighborhood associations. Without a response, they bring him to justice. It is not the first time, and in view of the attitude of the members of the government it will not be the last.

From the Banlieue's testimonies to the Administration's offices there is evidence of fictitious controls. The Defender of Rights, appointed by the French president, also published in 2017 a worrying fact: In the French State, a young black or Arabic man is twenty times more likely to stop police checks than a white one. Amnesty International makes this clear: “In the absence of strict monitoring to ensure the principle of non-discrimination, the police have too broad powers, allowing them to carry out such discriminatory controls.”

As early as 1992 a report said that “everyday” racism of the police was “undeniable”. These claims can be read in the investigation requested by the International Federation of Human Rights that year. They use the term “racist culture” in the report. They also highlight: “It is possible by the passivity, or complicity, of the hierarchically superior”.

In fact, even after 30 years, this eye closure is maintained. Moreover, in view of the influence of the police unions on the government, this passivity or complicity also occurs at the political level. “Governments want to treat the police well, so they hardly talk about these painful issues,” said in 2020 historian Carole Reynaud-Paligor in France 24. The documentary Police: quand les syndicats font la loi (“The police: when the unions do the law”), produced by France TV, shows us that the Ministry of the Interior depends on and will command the police unions. The decision not to put the problem of racism on the table is better understood.

We recall the response of Minister of the Interior, Bernard Castaner, in June 2020, in deciding to ban the technique of drowning and to criminalise cases of “proven racism”: he had to meet with the unions the same night; they called for protest and disobedience to the police, they carried out symbolic acts by bringing down the tips to the left and right; and finally he was taken over as internal minister.

These are the statements he made the day after a case of violence and racism he met with a video recording: three cops show up in a control drowning Cédric Chouviat, ignoring repeated warnings of “I’m drowning”. He died the following day, 42 years old. But it doesn't matter, Castaner talked too much because he made a statement that police unions don't like. Gerard Darmanin, who took the chair, immediately lined up: “I personally choke when I hear the word Police Violence. Yes, the police channel violence, but it is legitimate violence.”

The power of police unions

Government members received the report “Police and racism in France” during the Beauvau Security Conference. These reflections were organized by Emmanuel Macron to “modernize public security policy”, “for the benefit of the police, the genders and all the French”. From February to September 2021 he has organized seven round tables: police and civic relations; police and social monitoring; police and judicial relations; recruitment and training; police protection against psychosociological risks; maintenance of order; internal control; material conditions and video recordings.

No mention was made of police violence, which has emerged from popular neighbourhoods and has also become apparent in city centres, particularly since the Jaka Horiek movement, not even because of racism. Moreover, it was time to ratify all police protection. The Prime Minister, Jean Castex, led them “all the confidence”: “From my conviction, the vast majority of internal security forces have a particularly difficult daily work and that is in strict compliance with the rules.” In other words, what was contained in the report “Police and racism in France” had no place there.

The Beauvau de la Seguridad was Macron’s response to the experience of rap producer Michel Zecler, who internalizes police violence and racism. When he moved to the workplace on 21 November 2020, the three cops stopped him, beat him for six minutes and locked him up with racist insults. Thanks to the images recorded by a video surveillance camera, which according to the police version made “violence” and “aggression”, the truth was discovered. On 30 November, Interior Minister Darmanin declared: “There may be some structural problems long ago.” But I couldn't say more than that, and do less. Castaner learned late, but his descendants know it.

We were made clear this summer with the death of Nahel Merzou, a 17-year-old Algerian Frenchman. The truth was also possible thanks to the shooting of the moment by one person: in a control, on 27 June, the young man was shot dead. In his first expression, Macron described what happened as “inexcusable” and “incomprehensible”, and dedicated “support” and “adhesion” to the relatives of the deceased. But, angry by the police union, he quickly relocated to his side, allowed all cuts for the victim and supported the police blindly.

Although the official document of the trade unions Alliance and Unsa raised the complaint and surprise of the citizens, the social partners and the election, the president remained. Police messages that seemed to call the civil war: they called the “war” against the “harmed” and “wild trolls”, the rebels of the Banlieues.

The rebellions lasted nine nights. The Government limited its response to the repression: 40,000 policemen and gendaring me mobilized, three times more than in the 2005 scrambled reminders, and 4,000 arrests for eight days, judging more than half and condemning 1,800 people to prison. Members of the government focused their attention on parents, opening the way to punish the parents of detained children – cutting social aid or “two years’ penalty and a fine of 30,000 euros”. Since then, as regards urban policy, nothing new has been raised. Nor in the case of racism and violence.

During these days, ten complaints have been lodged in the Police Inspectorate IGPN and the response to be given is pending. As for the most serious cases, the repression resulted in one death, one citizen in a coma and ten blows. This is the case of Hedi R., beaten by the police in the head with a LBD thrower ball and hit afterwards. Images of a video surveillance camera and witnesses' testimonies belittle the police version, interrogate four policemen. Under three free judicial controls and the fourth, the LBD the throwing ball, the decision to enter as a prisoner awoke the anger of the police unions and resumed the protest movement: they stopped working or repeated the minimal services. The Minister of the Interior had to meet with the trade unions at the end of July and were satisfied with the meeting: “The minister has told us what we wanted to hear. It’s aligned with us,” says the Alliance spokesman. In the end, they also released the room under judicial control.

Cumulative excesses

The detonator of the rebellion is the murder of Nahel. But it could be the same. Twenty days earlier, police shot Guinean Alhoussein Camara, 19. Last year the French police killed 39 people and the year before 52. And there is a risk of continuing along the same path, seeing that the problems on which they are based are not addressed: to keep the children of migrants in some areas of the city, ghettos, marginalized from the working world, subjected to repeated discriminatory police controls, almost disappeared from these public service neighborhoods, to suffer stigmas from the criminal and savage media, etc.

The political scientist Decolonial Françoise Verges says that in the past there is the basis of this disease: “Something radically racist is in the French police organization. A historical genealogy appears ranging from the armed miles of plantations [during slavery] to the colonial, collaborating, fascist and anti-Semitic Police. He tortured, killed and drowned the Algerians, accepted the extreme right-wing unions. Their formation is militaristic and based on masculinity.” The police played a fundamental role in ensuring the dependence of slavery and colonialism. Here we have, for example, the Indigenous Code of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a special sanctioning regime aimed at the colonized.

Since then, we have also been part of this genealogy the reality of popular neighborhoods. The day after the Second World War, the French State promoted an immigration policy to achieve the workforce, with the contribution of thousands and thousands of workers from Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Since the 1960s, the towers were built on the banks of the cities in order to accommodate them. Soon it appeared that this urban model did not guarantee social cohesion and that it was even harmful for the natives. The neologism Sarcellite begins to call the depressive and boring character these places of residence assume, a word that a banlieue Sarcelle used in an interview to designate his discomfort. In 1979, the first rebellion took place in these neighborhoods, caused by police abuse. On 28 March 1983, young people from the popular district of Lyon called Minguettes a hunger strike. His document stated: “This action [Police] responds to the new violence and, above all, to a climate of hardening for young people of immigrant origin: notable revitalization of racism, unemployment, deterioration of our neighborhoods, inability to access new housing in the metropolitan area of Lyon, etc.” The strike continued with the March for Equality and Against Racism: on 15 October 30 people left Marseille and 3 100,000 came to Paris. Despite the 40 years since then, reading is still too topical.

The report is complemented by the Quartier General media interview with the sociologist Michel Koreff, brought by CC: "Political power is in a co-management of police unions."