"Everyone against the wall." The French police operation that has sparked nights of clashes and a national controversy started like thousands of others in the country's deprived suburbs. It was a routine stop-and-search on the "3,000" estate in Aulnay-sous-Bois north of Paris by a group of four armed officers -- a commonplace event but widely resented by local young people. It ended with Theo, a 22-year-old talented footballer with no criminal record, being treated in hospital for severe injuries to his anus and rectal area, as well as head and face wounds.
He says one of the officers assaulted him with a baton, which has led to rape charges against him. All four have been suspended pending an investigation.
"Unless you've grown up on an estate, you can't understand what it's like here," local man Chris, a 27-year-old security guard, told AFP. "The police that we see are aggressive. Insults are normal, so is violence."
What has particularly angered people in the estate, a melting pot of different cultures and daily resentments, is that it happened to Theo, a well-liked local whose family is respected. "When I hear (from the police version) that he hit a policeman, I don't believe it. With others, you could imagine, but not him," added Chris, who has known the family since childhood. The incident has again cast a spotlight on the problem of community policing, with the scandal inevitably becoming a political issue in a presidential election year. "There's an almost permanent hostility against the police," academic Christian Mouhanna from the state-funded CNRS research centre told AFP. "This is just the highly mediatised tip of the iceberg."
Part of the problem, says Mouhanna, is that for decades, governments have followed an old adage that says: "the start of good behaviour comes with being scared of the police." This idea of the police as enforcers, rather than public servants, is wrongly ingrained in the training and the culture of the security forces, he says. Furthermore, reforms in the last 10 years have progressively removed vital local police from communities, while giving officers greater powers and more weapons.
In the latest example, the French parliament is debating a law drafted in the wake of a series of terror attacks that would give police more freedom to use firearms. "If we want the police to have authority, there needs to be a sense of legitimacy," he added. "But if you show authority only by force and that's how you manage relations with local people, then there's no legitimacy."
"There's no communication with young people," 24-year-old Babacar, an electrical engineer, told AFP. "As long as there's no mutual respect, it'll never get better."
