Discontent, identity issues, poverty. “Revenge”. The French intelligence services are looking for the causes of why a new outbreak of street violence, in this case as a result of the death of a young North African man shot by a police officer in Nanterre. One thing is clear in this case: “There is a declared desire to kill law enforcement.”
This has been assured to Le Monde by a member of the Central Territorial Intelligence Service (SCRT, for its acronym in French), an investigative police unit whose main mission is to investigate issues that may lead to serious disturbances of public orderlike those that are being experienced in the European country in recent days.
AND the violence goes to more. The figures speak for themselves when compared with other major riots with a racial component, those that occurred in 2005: three times as many buildings have been attacked in six days than occurred then in 21 days, while more that doubled the number of detainees on a daily average. In addition, many more agents have had to be deployed to combat criminals, as well as advanced means such as elite units or drones, something that did not happen years ago.
[La colecta en apoyo al policía de Nanterre que mató a Nahel ya supera el millón de euros]
The intelligence services indicate that they are leaving chaining successive social criseswhich lead to disturbances of public order: the ‘yellow vests’, the anti-vaccine demonstrations during the Covid-19 pandemic, the marches against the pension reform in recent months and now the protests over the death of Nahel at the hands of of a police officer.
In fact, remember that there must be a series of very specific causes for the flame of a fire to ignite. uncontrolled outrage take the form of a violent mob night after night. “Ten days before Nahel’s death, a young man of Guinean origin died in similar circumstances in Angoulême without any problem,” police sources told the French media.
The perfect Storm
So, what are the reasons why taking down Nahel has ignited the spark of some ongoing incidents? The police forces point out as an essential element the dissemination of videos on social networks, which generate a ‘call effect’.
The riots began in Nanterre, where the young man of North African origin died, hours after the event. The following day, they were replicated in other municipalities, and the most serious moments occurred on the third and fourth nights, when the police deployment already amounted to 45,000 agents to try to keep the streets under control.
[“España es Francia con 10 años de retraso”: Vox agita el miedo al migrante tras su “que te vote Mohamed”]
But social networks not only encourage imitation by other criminals, they also make it easier for them to organize. The live broadcastsFor their part, they allow them to come to join where the situation is most out of control, in a decision in which the perception of feeling integrated and protected in such a huge mass that it will be impossible to suffer any retaliation is key.
To this we must add that a good part of the riots have taken place in suburbs or small cities, where there are problems of poverty and social marginalization and where the forces of law enforcement are much less numerous than in large cities.
The low socioeconomic level of some of the most affected areas causes the riots to lead to robberies of shops: “The robbery and looting are justified in the name of a way of ‘catching up’ with the poverty that is experienced on a daily basis”, indicate police sources to Le Monde.
The profile: young ‘unruly’ or delinquent?
But not everything is linked to economic factors or political demands. The security forces are clear that the profile of the rioters is eminently young, around 17 years old, and the number of women present is on the rise.
However, the intelligence services classify the majority of the protagonists of the riots into two large groups: about 45% are people with criminal records, but the rest are unknown to the police. From the SCRT they consider that the latter see the altercations as “a game”, that “they do not perceive the seriousness of the violence committed” and that for them the alteration of public order is a “great liberation”. This perception of gambling is fostered by the display or dissemination of content on social networks, feeding back on the problem.
