French police must be going soft, seriously soft. IIRC, they were known as mean when crossed, and French prisons were deliberately made barely survivable.
Oh, I remember! Rails were installed on all French police station stairways, which reduced the number of suspects falling down the stairs (sometimes repeatedly).
I saw a video a few years back, maybe on “60 minutes”. They showed a uniformed French cop literally kicking a Gypsy off a train or maybe it was a subway. I mean he put his boot right on the guys ass.