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REPUBLICA PRESS
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Force Ouvriere (France)

Thousands of French Police Protest in Call for More Protection

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PARIS — Declaring that their work has become increasingly dangerous because of the government’s failure to address France’s underlying social problems, thousands of police officers protested in Paris on Wednesday in a show of force that left politicians scrambling.

Police union leaders demanded tougher laws for violence against officers and stiffer sentences against convicted criminals as thousands massed in the rain in front of the National Assembly, issuing warnings to political leaders who were present but were not invited to speak.

“Your presence is an important sign,’’ Fabien Vanhemelryck, the secretary general of Alliance Police, a right-leaning union whose members appeared to dominate the protest, said from a stage next to a giant screen. “It must not be a sign of future elections, but a wake-up call, a sense of responsibility, of change and a return to safety.’’

The protest, organized by 14 police unions, came after the recent killings of an officer and a police employee, even as pressure has been mounting to reform a force often criticized for its brutal tactics and racist behavior.

theme of crime already dominating the political debate a year before the presidential election, the protest drew leaders from nearly all of France’s political parties. The criticism of official policy put the government of President Emmanuel Macron in an awkward situation and threatened to overshadow a rare nugget of good news on Wednesday, as restaurants and cafes partially reopened nationwide after months of pandemic restrictions.

Gérald Darmanin — the powerful interior minister and head of the national police — joined the demonstration as officers called out to him, “We need your help.’’

In a rare instance of a minister joining a demonstration critical of his own government, Mr. Darmanin said he was simply expressing his solidarity while political rivals said he was effectively protesting against himself. Mr. Darmanin has spearheaded the government’s efforts to fend off a challenge from Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader and Mr. Macron’s main challenger.

issue of crime has directly affected the fortunes of French politicians and parties in the past two decades, and is expected to do so again in the coming months, as France tries to pull itself out of the ravages caused by the pandemic. On Wednesday, some political figures on the left joined the protest and talked tough on crime, even though the government’s statistics do not show the kind of criminality conjured by politicians.

Fabien Jobard, a political scientist specializing on the police.

Protesters began by paying hommage to Eric Masson, an officer killed in the southern city of Avignon during an antidrug operation, and Stéphanie Monfermé, a police employee killed in a terrorist attack at a police station in the city of Rambouillet, near Paris.

The number of police officers injured while on duty has nearly doubled in the past 15 years, jumping from 3,842 in 2004 to 6,760 in 2019, during a year marked by violent Yellow Vest protests, according to figures from the interior ministry.

Mr. Macron has recently stepped up efforts to respond to police concerns. He pledged to recruit 10,000 additional police officers by the end of his current five-year term and went on a ride-along with officers in a drug-dealing area of the city of Montpellier.

pushing back on proposals to reform their methods, such as banning chokeholds, and to open themselves up to greater scrutiny for racism. Police unions also recently broke off monthslong talks with the government on potential reforms.

Controversies over deadly and brutal police interventions sparked widespread protests against the police last year. A contentious security law empowering the police drew thousands of protesters to the street as video footage revealed the brutal beating of a Black music producer, Michel Zecler, inside his own Paris studio by officers.

recent poll showed that 27 percent of respondents said they regarded the police with “anxiety’’ or “hostility.’’

“The police play a very strong role in protecting the political regime in France,” Mr. Jobard, the police expert said, adding that they often “feel that politicians are using them as a firewall, as a shield.”

Despite the intensifying debate on insecurity, crime in France rose in the 1970s through the mid-1980s before declining and stabilizing. Government data show that nearly all major crimes are now lower than they were a decade or three years ago.

France’s per capita homicide rate — 1.16 per 100,000 people in 2018 — was about the same as most parts of Britain, according to data from the European Commission, while Germany’s rate was 0.76. France’s rate was far lower than that of the United States, which was five per 100,000 people in 2018, according to F.B.I. data.

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France Opens Terrorism Inquiry After Killing at Police Station

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PARIS — The French authorities opened a terrorism investigation on Friday after a knife-wielding assailant killed a police officer at a station about 25 miles southwest of Paris before being shot dead.

France is still on high alert for terrorism after a string of attacks last fall, and Jean Castex, the prime minister, and Gérald Darmanin, the interior minister, quickly rushed to the scene of the attack in Rambouillet, a quiet, affluent town.

“She was a policewoman,” President Emmanuel Macron wrote on Twitter after the attack, identifying the victim only as Stéphanie. “We will yield nothing in the fight against Islamist terrorism,” Mr. Macron added.

Mr. Castex told reporters that the officer, who carried out administrative duties at the station, had been “cravenly” killed in “dramatic” circumstances, but he did not elaborate.

said on Twitter.

a history teacher was beheaded after showing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a class on free speech in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, and three people were stabbed to death at a basilica in Nice.

to counter Islamist extremism in France. The attack is likely to further amplify the prominence of the issue during the presidential election campaign next year.

After a wave of large-scale attacks in 2015 and 2016 that killed hundreds, France has faced smaller spikes of Islamist terrorism perpetrated by isolated, self-radicalized individuals whom intelligence services have found hard to track.

“Today we need to do a better job following the bottom of the spectrum: these individuals who are not perceived as the most dangerous, but who can take action without any forewarning,” Mr. Macron told the newspaper Le Figaro this week.

Valérie Pécresse, a top regional official, said the assailant had struck at “a symbol of France,” a town in the countryside that she described as “so peaceful.”

Ms. Pécresse said the police station in Rambouillet was well protected and that access inside was restricted. The attacker, she said, appeared to have waited for the victim to briefly exit the building.

French security forces have been often been targeted by terrorists.

In 2016, an Islamic State assailant fatally stabbed an off-duty police officer and his companion, a police employee, at their home. In 2017, a gunman killed a veteran police officer on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. And in 2019, in one of the worst attacks on the French police to date, a radicalized police employee stabbed four of his colleagues to death at the Paris police headquarters.

The attack on Friday was followed by widespread condemnation, especially among Mr. Macron’s political opponents on the right and far-right, who have ramped up criticism of his security record before France’s 2022 presidential elections and regularly blame him for doing too little to protect the police and being too soft on crime.

Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Rally party and Mr. Macron’s main rival in next year’s election, told the BFMTV news channel that Mr. Macron’s administration was synonymous with “chaos.”

“The security situation in our country has never been so critical,” Ms. Le Pen said. “I wonder if France has become the country most affected by terrorism in Europe. Does it bother the government? I’m not even sure.”

Constant Méheut and Norimitsu Onishi contributed reporting.

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