Television images of Liverpool fans being teargassed and pepper-sprayed casually outside the Stade de France before Saturday's tumultuous Champions League final have shown a focus on France's policing techniques — not for the first time.
Human Rights Watch documented the extensive physical injuries caused by weapons ranging from truncheons to teargas grenades, rubber bullets, and larger "flash-ball" rubber pellets on peaceful citizens in recent years, according to Amnesty International and the UN's high commissioner for human rights.
In November 2020, a video of four white police officers viciously beating an unarmed black music producer in his Paris studio sparked global outrage, causing President Emmanuel Macron to take action.
Last year, when announcing a series of measures aimed at enhancing public-police relations as well as officers' working conditions, Macron stated that French police must be "beyond reproach" and that "when mistakes are made, they must be punished."
Long a taboo topic, French policing has become a major political problem, especially since the gilets Jaunes rallies of 2018 and 2019, in which an estimated 2,500 protestors were hurt, with several losing eyes or limbs.
According to interior ministry estimates, at least 1,800 police and gendarmes were hurt in the same protests, and French police claim they are the target of rising violence, some of it extreme and purposefully intended at maiming or even killing them.
Part of the current problem, according to experts, is an influx of quickly hired, poorly trained officers since the 2015 Paris terror attacks, when entry standards were decreased and training was reduced from 12 to eight months - with trainees on duty after three months.
However, there are underlying concerns as well, the most important of which is the fundamental connection between the French police and the general people. In France, police, and gendarmes regard themselves as guards of the state and government, not as servants of the people.
Most French citizens regard the French national civil police force and military gendarmerie personnel – many of whom will have been stationed in areas hundreds of kilometers away from their homes – in this light.
The French police, according to criminologist Sebastian Roché, are "programmed to be insulated from society, to respond exclusively to the executive." When this is combined with France's centuries-long tradition of political street protest, an explosive mix is created.
Fearful of the streets, French politicians, particularly those in the interior ministry, have long guarded the police, instilling a strong distrust in the population. "Do not speak about police aggression or repression - such statements are unacceptable in a state under the rule of law," Macron urged in 2019.
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