POLICE, YOUTH RELATIONS PUT TO TEST

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In the suburbs, youth complain about a lot of things – poor living conditions, lack of education, joblessness, boredom. But tense police relations often top the list.

Mareme Kaloga, 20, from Clichy, says her recent experiences go against what she learned about police when she was young.

“You’re supposed to feel safe when you see the police around. Well I don’t … I’m just a regular citizen and I don’t feel safe, which is not what I’m supposed to be feeling.”

Young people are not the only ones who have noticed. Last year, Amnesty International reported that the French police have been accused of human right violations that are not regularly investigated. Ethnic minorities are often the targets of these violations, which are seldom brought to court, it charged.

Kaloga has a white friend who is a police officer. He admitted to her that he and other officers focus their attention almost exclusively on young people and minorities.

Youth also charge that police do many things to frustrate and harass them.

Yannick Annor, 19, from Satrouville, believes that in his neighborhood the only people who harass him are the police.

“Sometimes they ask for my ID card, not every day. But the problem is they knew that I live there. They knew because they always pass in the neighborhood and by car. They know the people who live in this neighborhood,” he said. “And after a while ... it is just to harass you.”

Kaloga recalled an incident outside her apartment last year. She said she was hanging out with some friends when police approached and began to checks ID cards (which the French describe as control) for everyone but one.

“What shocked me was the fact that we were black, we were Arabic and we had a friend, she’s white. They controlled everyone except her. That’s unacceptable.”

Lack of respect and trust seem to be at the heart of the problem. In France, using the personal pronoun tu is disrespectful to a stranger. Still, police often use it when addressing youth and minorities.

Kaloga described an experience of her brother:
“When the police officers came downstairs to my house, they talked to my brother, they said tu instead of saying vous. And my brother says, ‘Hey, I’m 21, I deserve as much respect as you do, so talk to me properly.’ So I think that it might be a detail, but it’s an important detail.”

Kaloga says there is obvious tension between police and youth. She says a lot of it stems from this lack of respect.

“Some people, they are controlled, IDed, maybe five times a day. How are you supposed to be controlled five times a day? I mean, you’re just going from one point to another. You know, that’s not normal.”

Malika Dahbi ,18, believes it comes down to the atmosphere between police and youth. In her suburb of Saint Denis, relations are tense.

Though suburban police refused repeated requests for an interview, this tension appears to work both ways. Part of the problem might be police’s lack of understanding of the neighborhoods where they are stationed. Most officers come from outside the suburbs, and young officers in particular are assigned to the area because they cannot choose where they work.

“I think in the suburbs, the police … are scared as well,” said Mathilde Clauser, 19, who attends a private school in Paris. She believes that police are becoming stricter in the suburbs because they are worried that they cannot control the residents, most of whom resent them.

Annor agreed. “When they put on the police uniform it is like they are king of the world. When they don’t have the uniform, they are like us.”

Last summer, the Open Society released a yearlong study that showed police consistently stopped people based on ethnicity and dress, rather than behavior. Documenting over 500 police stops across five locations in and around Gare du Nord train station and a commuter rail station, blacks and Arabs were more likely to be stopped, the study reported.
 

Many youth had personal stories of harassment. Faiza Zeroula, 25, a member of Bondy Blog, said her brother was continually harassed by police until he donned a business suit.

Serge Michel, a Swiss journalist and founder of Bondy Blog, confirmed police are uncomfortable in the suburbs. He told the story about a Swiss policeman who worked with French police two years ago. While on patrol one day, the pair came across a group of young Arabs and blacks. “The Swiss officer said, ‘Hello’ to the group, and the French policeman asked him, ‘Which side are you on?’”

Although most youth have some negative feelings toward police, they recognize that not all are hostile. “But it’s difficult … because in the suburbs we all get the image, the picture that police people are not nice,” said Annor.

Luc Bronner, a reporter for an independent French newspaper LeMonde, explained that while he disagreed with a lot of police actions, he believes that their response to the 2005 riots was admirable.

“We could have had dozens of deaths in France, but the French policemen decided not to fight with the young people. So I think it was the key of these riots, the police was excellent, really excellent.”

But Bronner agrees with many youth who say that police must change their day-to-day methods before it’s too late. “I think that the police don’t understand the fact that the ways they act in the suburb creates some new riots for the future,” he said.

Editor's note: Photographs for this package were taken by Indianapolis Star photographer Kelly Wilkinson and Randy Johnson, Randy Johnson Photography.

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