With chaos consuming France, police rules for firing their guns are under scrutiny

French cities are again combustible with widespread destruction of property and mass looting over the last three nights, and this time around the outrage may be much harder for President Emmanuel Macron to contain. 

Whereas a succession of unpopular austerity measures, particularly raising the pension age, sent French union members — along with some troublemakers — into the streets for several months this past winter and spring, the extreme violence of the past 72 hours is on a more worrying scale.

It was triggered by the police shooting of a 17-year-old teen, known as Nahel, who was pulled over at a traffic stop Tuesday in the Paris suburb of Nanterre.

He was shot dead as he drove off, against police orders.

Overnight, the officer now charged with voluntary homicide in the shooting apologized through his lawyer and there have been continuing pleas from Macron's government for calm. 

Neither action appears to have lowered the temperature.

Scenes captured overnight on social media videos suggest the violence has reached a scale unseen in more than three decades.

In Montreuil, rampaging crowds destroyed shops and McDonald's restaurant. In Nantes, a car crashed through the glass window of a major supermarket. In Aubervilliers, near Paris, a bus depot was burned to the ground along with 12 buses,  and the facade to the Paris Aquatic Centre, a major Olympic venue for the 2024 games, was damaged by rioters.    Municipal buildings in Marseille and several other cities were also torched.   

"Every young man from the 'banlieues' [suburbs] can recognize themselves in the case of Nahel who was killed," said prominent French sociologist Christian Mouhanna, who has studied French policing extensively. He serves as director of the department of research and development at the National Institute for Advanced Security and Justice Studies in Paris.

Nahel, whose last name has not been released, had an Algerian mother and a Moroccan father.

Mouhanna said the "banlieues," or suburbs of Paris, have become synonymous with troubled, high-crime rate communities, typically home to many immigrants and refugees from Africa.   

For many, the shooting of the teen at a traffic stop, the third such fatal police shooting in 2023, confirms what they already knew — that they are victims of institutional racism and systemic discrimination, especially by police. 

"The problem is that we have 20 years of mistakes in these policies to change and they can't be changed in two days or two weeks," Mouhanna told CBC News in an interview.

Specifically, local activists blame a 2017 change to French law that they claim lowered the threshold for police to fire their weapons at people they believe might be about to commit a serious crime.