At a march for the French teen killed by police during a traffic stop earlier this week, protesters described simmering anger in the community over security forces that are widely perceived as aggressive and racist.
An estimated 6,200 people marched through the streets of Nanterre, a suburb west of Paris, where 17-year-old Nahel was shot dead by police at the wheel of a yellow Mercedes he was driving illegally.
Led by his mother Mounia, who travelled on a flat-bed truck while waving at the crowds, the protest snaked from the family’s housing estate to the local police station where clashes took place.
Riot police fired teargas to disperse the crowd, while groups of youths, some of them wearing balaclavas, threw rocks and other projectiles.
“It’s the final straw. We can’t put up with it anymore,” said Corinne, 45, a black local resident who has lived in the area for 14 years. “It’s always the same people who get killed.”
“Personally, I’m scared of the police,” added the financial services worker, who asked not to give her last name. “The way they talk to you is rude. And you always know things can quickly spin out of control.”
Campaigners have long complained about heavy-handed policing in France’s multi-ethnic suburbs, with a string of incidents involving black or Arab-origin citizens over the last two decades sparking rioting.
Police unions respond that their officers face an impossible task trying to serve communities that suffer from high levels of delinquency and drug-related crime but where they are often treated as an unwelcome presence.
“Everyone hates the police!” was a popular refrain at the rally on Thursday, along with “Justice for Nahel!”.
Graffiti reading “The police kills” or “Death to the pigs” has been scrawled on walls and bus stops throughout the area.
– ‘It needs to stop’ –
“They’re there to help us, not to kill us!” said outraged mother-of-four Fanta Traore, a school worker, as she watched police fire teargas at the end of the march. “I don’t trust them at all.”
The 36-year-old said her and her husband’s cars had been burned on Wednesday night and she had been kept up by explosions until 4:30 am, but she understood the anger.
“He was just a kid. We knew him a bit. Everyone knows each other round here,” she said. “It needs to stop. How can you kill someone like that? For nothing.”
The policeman involved in the shooting initially claimed he opened fire after Nahel drove towards him, but video of the incident shows him stood at the side of the vehicle and discharging his weapon at point-blank range.
He was charged with voluntary homicide on Thursday.
A record 13 people were killed by police during traffic stops last year, with many of the victims black or of Arab origin.
Another policeman was charged with voluntary manslaughter on Wednesday in the southwestern city of Angouleme after he shot and killed a black 19-year-old supermarket worker as he drove to his job in the early hours of the morning earlier this month.
“The whole world must see that when we march for Nahel, we march for all those who were not filmed,” Assa Traore, a well-known activist against police violence whose brother died after being arrested in 2016, told the rally.
Compared to the notoriously deprived suburbs of northeast Paris, Nanterre is relatively wealthy and lies in the shadow of the city’s financial district whose skyscrapers are visible from the housing estates that form pockets of poverty.
Gangs of youths fired fireworks at security forces and set fires around the area on Wednesday night in a second night of violence, with clashes also reported in other areas of Paris and in smaller towns around the country.
“Burning things is not the solution,” Corinne said. “They’re destroying other people’s property in our community. But maybe it’s the only way to get heard, and it seems to be having an effect.”
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