As the nation awaits this afternoon’s announcement on the end of lockdown, the main news stories are back to the old abnormal – police brutality and a possible terror attack.
Deux motards de la #police dans un état grave après après été percutés volontairement à Colombes par un individu qui a aussi percuté une voiture de la la police municipale. Pensées fraternelles à nos collègues. #Colombes @prefpolice pic.twitter.com/O4swJfpOQ2
— Synergie-Officiers (@PoliceSynergie) April 27, 2020
The most recent story is an attack on police in Colombes, near Paris. Yesterday afternoon a man drove a BMW at speed at police checking traffic, injuring two of them, one seriously, and crushing a police motorbike against a police car.
He has a police record for criminal activity about 10 years ago but was not on the national terror watch list.
The attacker reportedly told arresting officers that he was inspired to attack the police after watching videos of the situation in Gaza and that he wanted to die a martyr.
The case has not yet been classified a terror attack but may be.
On Sunday, at 2.00am to be precise, police were allegedly caught on video appearing to racially abuse a man in a scene that is followed by banging and screams.
🔴 GLAÇANT
— Taha Bouhafs (@T_Bouhafs) April 26, 2020
À L’ile-Saint-Denis très tôt ce matin(1h43), lors d’une interpellation des policiers repêchent un homme qui s’est jeté dans la Seine pour leur fuir, je vous laisse découvrir la suite : pic.twitter.com/vcqepo7NNZ
The man is reported to have jumped into the Seine while trying to flee the police. After catching him, they appear to mock him, using a racial insult reserved for north Africans, and suggesting that the colleague who caught him should have weighed him down rather than fished him out of the river.
Later, although it is dark, one can hear the van doors slam, thuds, and what seem to be screams and laughter.
The video, reportedly filmed by a local resident, was put online by Taha Bouhafs, the journalist and activist who broke the story of presidential security guard Alexandre Benalla’s assault of demonstrators during a May Day demonstration in 2018.
Since then he has had his troubles with the police, being violently arrested while filming an undocumented workers’ protest in the Val-de-Marne in 2019 and charged with “outrage”, a catch-all accusation often levelled against people found insufficiently cooperative by the forces of law and order.
After he made the name of the arresting officer public, a police trade union published a graphic accusing him of having rabies and stirring up “anti-cop hatred”.
An inquiry into the alleged assault on Bouhafs was launched.
He was arrested again in 2020 after tweeting the news that the president was in the audience of a play he was watching.
The tweet prompted a small group of opponents of the government’s pension reform to descend on the theatre and try to enter, leading to Macron being forced to leave.
Bouhafs was detained on leaving the show, accused of planning acts of violence and vandalism and participation in an unauthorised demonstration.
Lockdown has done nothing to improve relations between the banlieue and the police, who are accused of using the extra powers it has given them as extra excuses to harass people in deprived areas.
Last week there was urban violence in Seine Saint Denis after a motorcyclist’s leg was broken when he hit the open door of a police car. He has admitted speeding but denies knowing it was a police car.
And in Champigny, as I mentioned in an earlier post, a home-made mortar was fired at the police station.
France’s Covid-19 death toll officially stands at 23,293, 437 in the past 24 hours. 28,055 patients are in hospital, down 162 yesterday, and 4,608 are in intensive care, down 74. 45,513 people have been discharged from hospital.
