France Shooting Updates: Police Use Tear Gas on Protesters at Vigil for 17-Year-Old
Assa Traoré, a French activist whose brother, Adama, was killed by police officers in 2016, gathered with other demonstrators in Paris on Wednesday to protest the police shooting of Nahel M.
The fatal police shooting of a teenage driver in a Paris suburb on Tuesday came after years of accusations against the police in France of violence and brutality.
Beatings by officers and deaths in custody have drawn heightened scrutiny of police tactics and prompted protests over their use of force, especially against people of color.
Here are some of the most prominent cases:
Michel Zecler
Image Michel Zecler, a French music producer, in his studio in Paris in 2020. Credit... Mauricio Lima for The New York Times
In November 2020, police officers punched, kicked and beat Michel Zecler, a 41-year-old French music producer, for six minutes inside the cramped entrance area of his studio in Paris.
Mr. Zecler told The New York Times that officers also used a racial slur against him.
After video of the beating was posted on social media, the French government rewrote a provision in a security bill that would have restricted the filming of police officers. The provision was ultimately struck down by France’s Constitutional Council.
Cédric Chouviat
Image The family of Cédric Chouviat led a protest near the Eiffel Tower in Paris in 2021 on the first anniversary of his death. Credit... Kiran Ridley/Getty Images
In January 2020, officers stopped Cédric Chouviat, a 42-year-old deliveryman, near the Eiffel Tower in Paris. He died after officers pinned him to the ground and put him in a chokehold. An autopsy showed that he had a broken larynx.
As the police held him down, Mr. Chouviat said, “I’m suffocating,” seven times, according to footage cited in an internal police report.
Théodore Luhaka
In 2017, the police arrested Théodore Luhaka, 22, as they checked the identification of a group of young men they suspected of dealing drugs.
In the following days, Mr. Luhaka said that the officers had insulted and beat him, and that one of them “took his baton and shoved it into my buttocks.” He was hospitalized with bruises and serious injuries to his rectum.
The officers are scheduled to appear in court next year.
Adama Traoré
Image A protester with a portrait of Adama Traoré in Persan, France, in 2020 on the fourth anniversary of Mr. Traoré’s death. Credit... Kiran Ridley/Getty Images
In 2016, Adama Traoré, a Frenchman, died of asphyxiation after fleeing an identification check and being arrested by three officers on his 24th birthday.
One of the officers later acknowledged that the three had placed “the weight of all of our bodies” on Mr. Traoré.
His sister, Assa Traoré, became a spokeswoman for The Truth for Adama, an advocacy group that has demanded justice for Mr. Traoré, and organized some of the biggest antiracism protests in Europe.
It is still unclear whether the officers will face trial.
Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré
Image Photographs of Zyed Benna, left, and Bouna Traoré, in Clichy-Sous-Bois, outside Paris, in 2006. Credit... Christophe Ena/Associated Press
In 2005, two teenagers — Zyed Benna, 17, and Bouna Traoré, 15 — died while hiding in an electricity substation as they fled the police in an impoverished suburb north of Paris.
Their deaths by electrocution prompted huge riots in Paris suburbs that spread to cities and towns across France.
The riots, which lasted for weeks, were rooted in longstanding complaints of discrimination, lack of opportunities and police harassment in French suburbs with large immigrant populations. Hundreds of young people set fire to cars and buildings and vandalized bus stops, in protests that became the largest civil unrest in the country in at least a decade.
In 2015, two police officers were acquitted of charges that they had failed to prevent the deaths of the teenagers.
Source: The New York Times
