Shooting of 17-year-old French-Algerian in Paris suburb inflames community tensions

Something has to be done about race relations in France. Equally, something has to be done about the trigger-happy French police.

Video footage of an officer in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre who on Tuesday afternoon shot dead a 17-year-old delivery driver of Algerian origin at point-blank range for refusing an order to stop has shocked France.

The youth, identified as Naël N, had allegedly been driving erratically and was pulled over at a traffic stop. At this point, two officers leaned into the driver’s side window. One took out his regulation-issue handgun and pointed it at the teenager, warning him, it is claimed, that if he did not halt and get out he would get a bullet in the head. Naël, it seems, panicked and gunned his engine, at which point the officer with the gun fired several shots. The car lurched forward and then crashed. Ambulance crew who arrived on the scene minutes later tried to revive the victim, but failed. 

Two other teenagers were in the car at the time of the incident. One ran off in the confusion, the other was taken into custody and questioned. The pair are likely to be key witnesses to what took place. 

In the aftermath of the shooting, riots broke out in Nanterre, a part of Paris that includes the financial district known as La Défense and is also home to one of the country’s largest universities. Cars and other vehicles were overturned and set on fire. More than 30 arrests were made and a number of police officers injured. 

President Macron, who was in Marseille to promote efforts aimed at improving community relations in the southern capital by way of increased government investment, said the shooting was “inexplicable” and “unforgivable”. What happened had “moved the entire nation”. 

The footballer Kylian Mbappe, captain of the French national side, tweeted that he was “hurting for my France”. Omar Sy, France’s foremost black movie actor, described the situation as “unnacceptable”. His thoughts were with the family and friends of the deceased, “that little angel who left us far too soon”. 

The officer who fired the fatal shots has been arrested and faces a charge of voluntary manslaughter. But there can be little doubt that the anger felt by millions of French citizens of immigrant stock, as well as of illegals who support the economy by performing every sort of menial task, will spill over in the nights ahead. 

Demonstrations by civil rights and victim support groups have been organised that could all too easily result in further violence in the streets. Interior minister Gerald Darmanin, whose shock and unease at what happened was palpable, has said that some 2,000 police, almost certainly including the controversial CRS, have been mobilised to prevent protests from getting out of hand. 

If the dead teenager had been white, the likelihood is that he would not have been shot. The officer, to be blunt, would not have pointed his gun. Instead, notice of a traffic violation would have been issued, resulting in a fine. At worst, the driver would have been taken into custody. 

But Naël N was not white. Instead, he was a youth of North African descent, which means in Paris, as well as in Marseille, that he would have been regarded with suspicion by the police. While it is true that crime is higher in the banlieues – districts in the outer suburbs whose populations are overwhelmingly black, Arab or Berber – it is also the case that these are the most deprived areas of the city, with the highest unemployment and the meanest household incomes. 

Successive French governments, including that of Emmanuel Macron, have tried to improve living and working conditions in the banlieues, but have for the most part failed. 

Public opinion – that is to say, majority white opinion – has it that the banlieues are ungovernable and bursting at the seams, their populations swollen each year by immigration both legal and illegal. 

The two phenomena – a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-afterwards police and a growing and frustrated immigrant community – are closely related. Today, the president of the far-right National Rally Party, Jordan Bardella, chose to concentrate not on the shooting of the 17-year-old but on what he regards as the root cause of France’s present difficulties: immigration and Islam. “If Monsieur Darmanin wants to fight against Islamism, then we must control immigration,” he said. What happened in Nanterre was a tragedy, but it was wrong of Kylian Mbappe to stir up emotion over the killing. “Who is he to be the judge?” 

Bardella, who answers ultimately to Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Rally’s parliamentary party, is one face of what is a growing demand for a halt to uncontrolled immigration. But there are others. Éric Ciotti, president of the centre-right Republicans, is openly seeking to move his party into a stronger anti-immigrant position. Éric Zemmour, leader of the extremist Réconquete movement, is always to be found where the fear and resentment is uppermost. And then there is Jean-Luc Mélenchon, convener of the left-wing coalition known as Nupes, who knows that if he is not careful, millions of his mainly working-class followers will be tempted to switch sides to the Far Right. 

Macron, meanwhile, is caught in a vice. He has sought to respond to the Islamist threat by requiring that Muslims should adhere strictly to the separation of church and state. At the same time, as in Marseille this week, he has acknowledged that more –  a lot more – needs to be done to improve community relations and to increase the status and earning power of North Africans in particular. But so long as the banlieues continue to view the police as their enemy, and for as long as the police continue to demonstrate their bias against immigrants, his efforts are effectively doomed. A rethink all round is what is needed. But who will make the first move?   

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