France Shooting Updates: Police Use Tear Gas on Protesters at Vigil for 17-Year-Old
The deadly police taking pictures of a teenage driver in a Paris suburb on Tuesday got here after years of accusations towards the police in France of violence and brutality.
Beatings by officers and deaths in custody have drawn heightened scrutiny of police techniques and prompted protests over their use of pressure, particularly towards individuals of coloration.
Here are a number of the most outstanding circumstances:
Michel Zecler
In November 2020, cops punched, kicked and beat Michel Zecler, a 41-year-old French music producer, for six minutes contained in the cramped entrance space of his studio in Paris.
Mr. Zecler informed The New York Times that officers additionally used a racial slur towards him.
After video of the beating was posted on social media, the French authorities rewrote a provision in a safety invoice that will have restricted the filming of cops. The provision was in the end struck down by France’s Constitutional Council.
Cédric Chouviat
In January 2020, officers stopped Cédric Chouviat, a 42-year-old deliveryman, close to the Eiffel Tower in Paris. He died after officers pinned him to the bottom and put him in a chokehold. An post-mortem confirmed that he had a damaged larynx.
As the police held him down, Mr. Chouviat mentioned, “I’m suffocating,” seven instances, in keeping with footage cited in an inside police report.
Théodore Luhaka
In 2017, the police arrested Théodore Luhaka, 22, as they checked the identification of a bunch of younger males they suspected of dealing medication.
In the next days, Mr. Luhaka mentioned that the officers had insulted and beat him, and that considered one of them “took his baton and shoved it into my buttocks.” He was hospitalized with bruises and critical accidents to his rectum.
The officers are scheduled to appear in court subsequent 12 months.
Adama Traoré
In 2016, Adama Traoré, a Frenchman, died of asphyxiation after fleeing an identification test and being arrested by three officers on his 24th birthday.
One of the officers later acknowledged that the three had positioned “the weight of all of our bodies” on Mr. Traoré.
His sister, Assa Traoré, grew to become a spokeswoman for The Truth for Adama, an advocacy group that has demanded justice for Mr. Traoré, and arranged a number of the greatest antiracism protests in Europe.
It continues to be unclear whether or not the officers will face trial.
Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré
In 2005, two youngsters — Zyed Benna, 17, and Bouna Traoré, 15 — died whereas hiding in an electrical energy substation as they fled the police in an impoverished suburb north of Paris.
Their deaths by electrocution prompted big riots in Paris suburbs that unfold to cities and cities throughout France.
The riots, which lasted for weeks, had been rooted in longstanding complaints of discrimination, lack of alternatives and police harassment in French suburbs with giant immigrant populations. Hundreds of younger individuals set fireplace to automobiles and buildings and vandalized bus stops, in protests that grew to become the biggest civil unrest within the nation in at least a decade.
In 2015, two cops had been acquitted of costs that that they had failed to stop the deaths of the youngsters.
