French Police Traumatic Stories Become Daily Reality, The Guardian

The killing of 17yo Nahel shows how little has changed since the deaths of two teenagers who tried to run away from the police in 2005, reported British daily “The Guardian“.
The shooting of Nahel exposes a denial of the institutionalized racism and racial profiling that has long been a part of French law enforcement, added the newspaper in an opinion article penned by Rokhaya Diallo.
In 2005, French law enforcement officers were accused of systemic racism when policemen chased three teenagers aged between 15 and 17 over nothing serious. The teens hid in an electricity plant and were electrocuted as a consequence, while the third suffered burns and life-changing injuries.
“If they go in there [to the power plant], I don’t fancy their chances of making it,” said a police officer in cold blood as he watched this horrific event play out.
The 2005 media and political reaction was, like now, to criminalize the victims and to scrutinize their past, as if holding them responsible for their atrocious deaths.
Back then, former interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy commented about the death of the teenagers saying that “If you have nothing to hide, you don’t run when you see the police.”
In France, young men perceived to be black or of North African origin are 20 times more likely to be subjected to police identity checks than the rest of the population, wrote the paper.
A UN rights body urged France, after the death of Nahel, to address profound problems of racism and racial discrimination within its law enforcement agencies.
In December 2022, the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination denounced both the racist discourse of politicians and police ID checks disproportionately targeting certain minorities. However, French President Emmanuel Macron still considers the term “police violence” unacceptable.
A law passed in 2017 allowing the police to use firearms led to a fivefold increase in the number of fatal shootings against moving vehicles. 13 people were shot dead in their vehicles in just 2022.