Last week’s police shooting of a teenager raised long-standing concerns about the French police and successive governments’ unwillingness to change an institution dominated by powerful unions.
It’s hard to criticize a force under strain and losing staff in a country plagued by turmoil and calls for repression.
However, rights groups’ claims of widespread racism, racial profiling, and questions regarding recruitment, training, and police philosophy cannot be ignored, experts say.
“What remains constant is a refusal by political powers to act on one of the factors of this explosive cocktail: the police,” historian Cedric Mas tweeted.
The police were deeply reformed after the 1960s and 1980s riots in the US and UK. In France? “Nothing for 40 years,” he said.
Race riots against police have plagued Western governments for decades, from Britain in 2011 to the US with the Black Lives Matter movement in 2013. Officially colorblind France has denied any racial factor.
Olivier Cahn, a law professor at Cergy University, said that since a 1995 reform that gave unions significant co-management powers, France had passed approximately 30 laws on law and order, but none have overhauled police units.
“From that point on, unions were involved in everything that’s co-managed, including HR,” he told Reuters. “Unions made deals with interior ministers in subsequent years.”
These wide powers maintain the allegiance of police officers on the ground who owe their career progress to their union, giving union leaders outsized influence over government ministries.
“The main fear is to lose control of the police forces,” Cahn remarked.
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