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.
OMG! Politicians, speech writers, and French stage/screen writers beware!
CRS = Calming Riots via Surrender
Islam, The Alleged Religion of Peace® ( TARP™ )? Click this picture:
No, I am not exaggerating. Click the pic, go to "last," and read backwards.
If you are not informed about this stuff, you will be made sick. If you are informed, you will be made mad, all over again.
Then, correlate with some of our own problems:
For "Thunder on the Border," click the picture:
Note tagline...
Thx for the ping HB
Unless you are under the impression that Napoleon is back in power you surely understand that the French will never support such actions. In fact, they are currently attacking the only man who might take effective actions against these punks.
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