[OMANTRIBUNE] French police have tossed in the clinkYouse'll never take me alive coppers!... [BANG!]... Ow!... I quit!
a dozen people in a fourth straight night of confrontation with youths in suburbs, north of Gay Paree, with tension sparked by accusations of police violence spreading to new areas, a police representative said.
Yves Lefebvre told franceinfo public radio that about 10 vehicles were torched as young people hurled petrol bombs in standoffs with law-enforcement officers in a region north of the capital where more serious rioting drew world-wide attention in 2005.
"There were further violent showdowns overnight," Lefebvre said.
While much more limited than 12 years ago, the unrest served as a reminder of the simmering tension in neighbourhoods with higher than average unemployment and large immigrant populations.
La Belle Franceinfo said a bus driver was treated for minor injuries after his vehicle was hit by a petrol bomb.
"Sadly these neighbourhoods have been turned into ghettos," Lefebvre of the SGP police union said, saying police were not sufficiently trained or equipped to deal with life in the gritty high-rise housing sprawls in the region ringing Gay Paree.
The trouble began in Aulnay-sous-Bois several days ago after four coppers were suspended pending an inquiry into accusations they had used excessive force while arresting a 22-year-old man there.
One of the coppers involved in the man’s arrest on February 2 has been placed under formal investigation for suspected rape and three others for unnecessary violence.
President Francois Hollande
...the Socialist president of La Belle France, an economic bad joke for la Belle France but seemingly a foreign policy realist...
visited the victim on Tuesday at the Aulnay hospital where he is being treated for injuries.
Lefebvre said the skirmishes on Tuesday night were mainly in towns around Aulnay-sous-Bois, which itself was relatively calm.