"he calls us animals"
If the shoe fits...
This article actually seems to sum up the situation rather well.
It seems the average Frenchman has little regard for the youth from the banlieues. They will not hire them, except for the most menial tasks, and don't want them living in their neighborhoods. The attitude of the average native French toward these people is probably represented well by the policeman quoted in the article.
And the beur youth in turn seem to despise the native French.
It seems the beur youths understand well that if they go beyond property damage, the French police will take the gloves off, and will kill them.
What will the future bring? The government will make gestures toward integrating these people into French society, consisting principally of throwing money at the problem. But these will be largely ineffective, because the reputation of these beur youths in the mind of the average Frenchman is now even worse than before. Who will want to hire them now, or live amongst them?
So the beur neighborhoods will become even more physically separated and patrolled, in order to protect the rest of France. More and more of these beurs will become criminals. They cannot be deported, because they are Frenchmen. And France will build many more prisons, and these prisons will become full.
And other beurs will become radical islamofascists. There will be terrorist attacks in France, and the French will be forced into making each radical banlieue into a mini-police state for the protection of the native population. And conditions in these areas will become a cause celebre for radical muslims around the world.
All because the French elites and certain French business interests decided many years age that it would be a grand idea to import into France millions of arabs with a radically different culture and religion, for cheap labor.
On the bright side, this French intifada may serve as a wake-up call for western Europe, which may then call a halt to further muslim immigration and pay closer attention to their existing muslim population for signs of terrorist and other antisocial activities.
Speaking of which, I got interested in the original incident as an offshoot of my enthusiasm for viewing satellite views of the riot locations ( made previous to the riots ) using Google Maps. I wondered if I could find the electrical substation where the deaths occurred, and started looking at French language web sites. I found that the substation is an "EDF" , and using this tag, I found a mention that the EDF was at the end of Rue des Bois. It's the street near the center, running NNE to the left of the circle, and terminating at a cluster of dark looking buildings. I think the EDF itself is the small square to the left.
I looked at three or four accounts, using Google translation, and although the police accounts and those of friends and family of the deceased are somewhat at odds, I think they are both consistent with a simple sequence of events. One very anti-police account gave a lot of melodramatic detail, and seemed to be based on a walkthrough of the scene by a reporter along with relatives.
Looking at the view, the wide street running NNE at the left edge is the boundary between Livry-Gargan and Clichy-sous-Bois. All agree that some number of youths were over in L-G, either innocently kicking a soccer ball in the park, or vandalising a construction site. The relatives pooh-pooh the very existence of a construction site, saying there was only a lock-box near a building ( or something like that ) and anyway they didn't touch it ( of course. ) There is no kind of construction site that I can discern in the area I conclude must be the scene of the confrontation, but the satellite view could easily be outdated.
[ An alternative scenario is that they were at the western boundary of C-S-B, about 500meters from the EDF, but this requires them to flee right through the center of town to get to the EDF, which doesn't make sense. I think they had to be near it. ]
This business of being across the town line seems to be significant. Could it be that the cops overinterpreted some suspicious actions because of the large group out of their own area? Whatever. They were accosted, and some were brought into custody, while others fled, presumably including the two victims of the electrocution. It's a big bone of contention whether the police were chasing them and the third youth ( the survivor is 21 years old . ) The relations paint an hysterical account of the boys fleeing in terror, else how could they perform the unthinkable act of leaping the high wall into the deadly EDF ? Yet in the same account a "small boy" points out "the red thing" ( "le truc rouge" ) by means of which the boys entered the enclosure. This was some kind of equipment stashed against the wall.
I gained the impression from my reading that, far from being an enigma ("It is the mystery." ) this whole business was a well established drill - a game between the locals and the cops, since this EDF required fire and electrical workers to access.
There was apparently police radio talk that the boys entered the EDF, clarified to mean that they were headed towards it, but not seen to actually enter it. I surmise that this is important to the police since if they know someone is in there, it's a big deal and they are obliged to initiate a rescue operation. There is in fact a law suit being prepared for failure to rescue persons in danger.
Well, about a half hour later, at 18:12 Oct 27, with the cops back at the station, the lights dim. I'm thinking that they fell, or something, when they tried to climb out. The power people investigate and it's Katy bar the door.
I have a friend who was an immigrant to France and who became a French citizen, which makes me think that this other person did not have his facts straight.
Could any of you please direct me to a source or sources that address these issues?