France to deploy 40,000 cops to quell violence

The police force clashes with youths in Nanterre, outside Paris Thursday. Pic/AP

A French police officer who shot and killed a 17-year-old driver will be investigated for voluntary homicide, following two days of fires and violent protests that injured scores of officers, officials said Thursday. Some 40,000 police officers will be deployed overnight to quell violence that engulfed cities and towns in the wake of the shooting.

The killing of 17-year-old Nahel during a traffic check Tuesday, captured on video, shocked the country and stirred up long-simmering tensions between young people and police in housing projects and other disadvantaged neighborhoods around France. Protesters set cars and public buildings ablaze in Paris suburbs and unrest spread to some other French cities and towns.

"The professionals of disorder must go home," Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said. "There will be a lot more police and gendarmes present tonight." Darmanin said 170 officers had been injured in the unrest but none of the injuries were life-threatening. Nanterre prosecutor Pascal Prache said that he had requested that the officer be held in custody. That decision is to be made by another magistrate. Based on initial investigation, Prache said, he concluded that "the conditions for the legal use of the weapon were not met."

Three persons were in the car when police tried to stop it Tuesday, the prosecutor said. Nahel managed to avoid a traffic stop by running a red light. He later got stuck in a traffic jam. Both officers involved said they drew their guns to prevent him from starting the car again. The officer who fired a single shot said he wanted to prevent the car from leaving and because he feared someone may be hit by the car, including himself or his colleague, according to Prache. Both officers said they felt "threatened" by seeing the car drive off, he added.

Police and firefighters struggled to contain protesters and extinguish numerous blazes through the night that damaged schools, police stations and town halls or other public buildings, according to a spokesperson for the national police. The national police on Thursday reported fires or skirmishes in multiple cities overnight, from Toulouse in the south to Lille in the north, though the nexus of tensions was Nanterre and other Paris suburbs. Police arrested 150 people around the country, more than half of them in the Paris region, the spokesperson said.

170
No of police officers injured in the violence

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