Pave: La voyoucratie*

Le jour 201 de Sarko

It feels like we live in a war zone.

I feel safer for having all those cops on the streets and the helicopter at night making sure the kids are not planning more riots, but it sure is hard to live like this.

Nadège Tanier,
Villiers-le-Bel resident and 40-year-old mother of two,
describing life in her little corner of the French social paradise
VILLIERS-LE-BEL November 29, 2007 (infra)

FRANCE STUNNED BY RIOTERS’ SAVAGERY
VILLIERS-LE-BEL December 2, 2007 (Times Online)

This Times report begins by detailing the ordeal of regional police chief Jean-François Illy, who, unarmed, was viciously beaten by "youths" at the scene of last Sunday's fatal motorbike crash. The locals accused the police of leaving the scene (they didn't) before help arrived. But who could blame them if they had, what with an armed mob forming and cries of, "Somebody must pay for this. Some pigs must die tonight!”, well?

His bruised and bloodied face signalled a worrying new level of barbarity in the mainly Muslim banlieues, where organised gangs of rioters used guns against police in a two-day rampage of looting and burning last week.

Not far from where Illy was lying was a policeman who lost his right eye after being hit by pellets from a shotgun. Another policeman displayed a hole the size of a 10p coin in his shoulder where a bullet had passed through his body armour.

Altogether 130 policemen were injured, dozens by shotgun pellets and shells packed with nails that were fired from a homemade bazooka. It prompted talk of urban “guerrilla warfare” being waged on French streets against the forces of law and order.

... "Given the weapons being used, it was lucky that nobody was killed," said a policeman. Nearby were the charred remains of the local constabulary. The nursery school was burnt down. So was the library.

Here is an interesting inversion. In 2005 smaller independent gangs stretched out their mayhem for 21 days, confrontations with the police were largely avoided. Compared to 2005 today's rioters are more organized -- huddled up in cadres of 30-100 (and here), they are armed, they have tactical objectives, capos direct and coordinate movements -- yet they are more readily quelled. Why is that?

When the rioters coalesce, when their deployments match in size the local police deployments -- in any toe-to-toe match-up -- the advantage shifts to the police. To keep themselves even, the rioters have changed their tactical objectives, from torching cars in 2005 to bigger targets and to attacking police since 2006 -- and these rioters are ready to kill. The police are not. The rioters' murderous ROE, like all thuggery and terrorism, puts passive rules-bound police at a huge disadvantage.

But bigger targets and bigger operations also more quickly expend the energies and resources of the rioters. So instead of a long 3-week criminal romp, the rioters have compressed and focused their criminality into a few days of destruction.

"LA RÉPONSE AUX ÉMEUTES, CE N'EST PAS PLUS D'ARGENT"
["THE RESPONSE TO THE RIOTS ISN'T MORE MONEY"]

30 novembre 2007 (Le Monde) - Sarko:

Je réfute toute forme d'angélisme qui vise à trouver en chaque délinquant une victime de la société, en chaque émeutier un problème social. Ce qui s'est passé à Villiers-le-Bel n'a rien à voir avec une crise sociale, cela a tout à voir avec la voyoucratie.*

... La réponse aux émeutes, ce n'est pas plus d'argent encore sur le dos des contribuables. La réponse aux émeutes, c'est l'arrestation des émeutiers. (...) On va donner plus à ceux qui veulent s'en sortir honnêtement, on va également donner à ceux qui ne le veulent pas, mais pas dans le même sens.

[I reject any form of other-worldly hooey that wants to see a victim of society in anyone who breaks the law, a social problem in any riot. What happened in Villiers-le-Bel has nothing to do with a social crisis. It has everything to do with a thugocracy.*

... The response to the riots isn't yet more money on the backs of the taxpayers. The response to the riots is to arrest the rioters. (...) We'll give more to those who want to get ahead honestly, we'll equally give to those who don't, but not in the same sense.]

'CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE' OF FRENCH UNREST

VILLIERS-LE-BEL November 29, 2007 (IHT) - The gunfire that echoed off the walls of the tower blocks in a violent outburst of rioting this week has subsided. But the calm, enforced by 1,000 police officers deployed at sunset every night, had a precarious feel to it Thursday as locals, caught in the middle between angry youths and the police, tried to make do with an undeclared state of emergency that has hobbled their daily lives in multiple ways.

... There is no curfew, but few people go out after dark, when rows of shielded riot police move in to take up positions around the town north of Paris. Buses, a popular target for youths with firebombs in the past, have stopped running in the early evenings, making it hard for people to come home from work. Many shops lock up hours before their normal closing time, partly for fear of vandalism, partly because few customers dare shop after dark.

L’ŒUVRE DES ENCAGOULÉS
Taking It To The Baby-man
[Photo source: NYT/Jacques Brinon/Associated Press]

... Among the buildings that were torched Sunday and Monday was a complex housing a nursery school [above photo] and a library with a children's section. The 135 children who are enrolled in the preschool had to be relocated to four makeshift classrooms in a nearby primary school. But the library, described by several parents here as a sort of community center for children, a refuge for those hungry to learn, is gone for now.

... "I don't like the way police are treating the kids sometimes, and I know they have not got many economic opportunities, but there is no excuse for the violence and the destruction," said Nora Hemmal, a Moroccan immigrant, who had hoped to enroll her one-year-old daughter next year in the nursery that was destroyed.

"Most of us are just caught in the middle," she said.

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* Alternate renderings: Hooliganism, yobocracy

PFFT (What is this?): Unofficial state of emergency 4½ | Rayonnement français 0