Posted on 11/13/2005 7:51:38 PM PST by blam
France calls in the CRS to garrison suburbs
By Henry Samuel
(Filed: 14/11/2005)
France's feared riot police, the CRS, is to be garrisoned in riot-hit suburbs.
The CRS: ‘It will be a ... police force to secure and patrol districts’
The announcement came yesterday as the regular police threatened action over the detention of an officer after a young man appeared to have been hit and kicked by two policemen in a Paris suburb.
A third of France's 15,000 riot police, whose brutal reputation comes from its violent repression of student-worker protests in May 1968, will remain in the country's 17 neighbourhoods hardest hit by the rioting of the past two weeks.
The CRS's new chief, Christian Lambert, who took over only three days before the riots began on Oct 27 said the force would spearhead a new form of neighbourhood policing in the toughest suburbs.
He insisted that the CRS had received training to perform their new role: "We will go to the most difficult neighbourhoods. Without stirring things up but by imposing ourselves, we will win back these territories.
"It will not be a police force just simply to say 'hello' to shopkeepers but a police force to secure and patrol districts, which will arrest, if necessary, the authors of reprehensible acts.
Nicolas Sarkozy had to flee an angry Paris mob
"We are not at war and do not have enemies. The minister chose to send the CRS to the toughest places. We are highly trained, experienced and hardened public servants. It is a vocation. The more professional you are, the fewer incidents there are."
The opposition Socialists, and some regular police unions, have criticised the interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, for having turned his back on the French equivalent of the British bobby in favour of a more aggressive approach to policing.
Mr Sarkozy has argued that rising crime under the Socialists needed to be countered by less prevention and more arrests. "The police are not there to be sports trainers," he said in an article in Le Monde.
The riots have highlighted the complete breakdown between police and the residents of the tough housing estates that ring France's main cities.
A recent government commission on police practices suggests that tensions have risen in such areas in part because local police have insufficient experience and supervision. There is also a lack of ethnic diversity among police chiefs: only one per cent are of North African descent, compared with 10 per cent of the population.
Cases of police discrimination and racism in communities with a high immigrant population are not uncommon, the commission said.
The announcement that the CRS is taking over mainstream policing duties comes at a time when the morale of local police is at an all-time low.
Firstly they were wrongly accused of throwing a tear gas canister at a mosque in Clichy then, last week, state television showed two officers in the northern Paris suburb of La Courneuve appearing to hit and kick a young man while six colleagues apparently stood by watching. One officer has been held in detention; four others are under investigation.
In a joint statement, two police unions called for the release of the detained officer.
"He is taking the stick for the over-abundant number of declarations from politicians who, after calling on the police's help over the past two weeks, now want to buy back social peace," they said.
One union called for police to perform only a "minimum service" - one step short of a strike.
France's feared riot police
Isn't this an oxymoron?
Feared only by Frenchmen...
...which means they're German Muslims.
from what I have read about the CRS, they are not to messed with by anyone. They enjoy their work.
Evidently the French police have adopted the practice used by the French military.
The older I get, the more I get CRS (Can't remember s__t)
Catholic Relief Services?
I hope this statement is just for public consumption, because if he seriously believes that, then he is just another politically hamstrung bureaucrat.
C.R.S. Cowards Running Scared?
France's feared riot police
"Be careful, or we will knock you senseless with the poles of our white flags, and sicken you by farting in your general direction!" ;)
Well as long as they don't HURT anyone....
I kinda like setting the TE mechanism so the MG shoots at knee level and watch the rioters get chewed up as they fall into the hail of bullets. Rat tat tat tat...
ROTFLMAO!
Feared by who?
LOL
| Les Français sont des singes de capitulation qui mangent du fromage.
|
The CRS in the Zone, that oughta start the bombs apoppin'.
"CRS?"
Cranial-Rectal Syndrome?
Can't Remember Sh*t?
No matter how much economics, lack of jobs and discrimination are behind the origins of the rioter's sentiments,
their own sense of desire to be separate and the Al Queda type's desire to play on that desire, will now, all together
be added to fundamentalist clerics agenda
who will oppose the placement of the riot troops in the rioter's communitities
and you have the ingredients for the beginning of France's intifada.
My guess is that in now more than a week or two, the rioting will be increasing again, if not in volume in severity and the rioters will be calling the CRS troops "occupiers".
If France thinks that any additional immigration from its former African colonies can be continued at this point, then its leaders are trapped in some alternate reality that does not reside on this world.
Three weeks into a nationwide riot and the french call in an unknown group of cops that were last used 37 years ago. They must be older than me. The first official statement was, "We have no enemies, but if we find any, we will be the first to surrender. We have been practicing since 1968, before jean f kerrie, was in a boat in cambodia on Christmas Eve.
Am I the only one losing it in an uncontrollable laughter?!
Well, let's see some violent repression.
Worrying about thugs who are hit and kicked by police is an indicator of the problem. Just how bad have the notoriously snotty Gendarmerie been to the young mooselimbs.
An American (or German) cop would have stomped the Shiite out of the twerp.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
