A very French education: riot police, tear gas, and wheelie bins

“Right, son, it’s time you became a man. Let’s go and fight the police,” I told my then 15-year-old sometime last year. It was a Saturday afternoon, and on Saturday afternoons for quite a while it was likely that somewhere in Paris “yellow vest” protesters or anarchists were looting shops, ripping up street furniture, or battling riot cops.

This particular weekend the action was conveniently at Place de la Republique, a few minutes walk from our home in the 10th arrondissement. My son was momentarily perturbed at the thought of wrestling with a robocop, before realising that his old man was winding him up again. But off we went to see what was going on in the square dominated by the statue of Marianne, the female embodiment of the French Republic.  

Paris security forces were by now well versed in dealing with the gilets jaunes. They’d been caught off guard when hordes of them laid waste to the Champs Elysees, and were now adept at “kettling” the unruly.

This was the situation when we arrived on the edge of Republique. Police lines blocked all streets leading to the square. From certain points you could see into the square itself, where a few hundred protesters engaged in sporadic clashes amid clouds of tear gas and the occasional blast of a sting-ball grenade.

A lot of people, thwarted protesters and simple onlookers, hung around at the police lines where we were, on boulevard Saint-Martin. There was an almost carnival atmosphere. At one point, the crowd broke into a chant: “Tout le monde deteste la police, tout le monde deteste la police.”

It was a bizarre situation: police officers standing there with dozens of people right beside them, gaily singing that they despised them. A puzzled look came over my son’s face.

He’s as law-abiding a citizen as I am, but after what he has seen over the years on the streets of Paris, and of course the many videos of police brutality on social media, he is no great admirer of the men and women in blue. But seeing them brazenly mocked by the crowd took him aback.

He had even more cause to be wary of the law when trouble came to his school this week. Again.

Images quickly zoomed around social media of police in riot gear chasing teenagers down the street, tear gassing them, pushing them around and administering the odd lash of the baton.

The kids had been engaging in what is a recurring part of school life in Paris: le blocus, or blockade.

This form of protest is generally carried out by piling wheelie bins at the main entrance to the school, and occasionally setting them on fire, with the aim of preventing students and staff from entering.

Often, many of the youngsters are not quite sure what the protest is about and join in just for fun. Secondary students participated in anti-pension reform protests a few years ago, despite the fact that it would be about half a century before the reforms could possibly affect them.

The blocus last Tuesday at several Paris lycees, including my son’s, which lies just behind Gare de l’Est, and the previous week, was for a cause that was more tangible for teenagers. The school, and the education authorities in general, are accused of not taking sufficient measures to stem the spread of the coronavirus.

It’s a fair point but on the other hand the authorities can’t do much - barring closing schools altogether - as most Paris schools are in cramped old buildings where effective social distancing is impossible.

The blocus was dealt with efficiently last Tuesday by the dozens of riot cops deployed. They were there early and a baton charge and a few blasts of tear gas were enough to chase away the kids who had gathered long before school was due to open.

The previous week students had managed to pile wheelie bins up at the school door. For a few hours there were tussles with cops, insults and a few projectiles were hurled, and tear gas was sprayed before classes got back to normal.

It made me think of my own childhood, when my primary school classmates in the Ardoyne area of Belfast would sometimes rush out when lessons were over and find a British army patrol to brick.

Images of burly riot police manhandling school kids are guaranteed to shock. But such is the frequency and almost ritual nature of street violence in France that they sparked only a few news reports in the media here.

I’ve lived in Paris for 20 years and probably none of those years has gone by without major street demonstrations for one cause or another, which more often than not ended in street battles with police.

My son’s previous school, a college or middle school, is in the 19th arrondissement. It’s right across the road from a police commissariat which in 2016 was attacked by dozens of youngsters protesting after a classmate was mistreated by police.

It was a full-on assault and the officers had to take refuge inside the building for some time before finally reemerging and dispersing the crowd.

It was in that same police station where a French reporter, Valentin Gendrot, was posted after he joined the police in an undercover operation. He published a book in September about his experiences, called Flic (cop).

He is at pains to say that French police are badly trained and have poor equipment and terrible working conditions. But overall the book paints a depressing picture of a culture of racism, violence, and impunity.

The same police station was back in the news this week following media reports of acts of “torture” carried out against detainees there. The police internal affairs department is investigating.

Amnesty International, domestic rights groups, and the government appointed human rights ombudsman have all denounced heavy-handed  tactics by French police.

The criticism intensified during the lengthy yellow vest movement, during which more than 2,000 protesters and hundreds of officers were injured, with several demonstrators losing a hand and more than a dozen losing an eye after being hit by police projectiles.  

More than 300 investigations were launched by the internal police department into allegations of police violence.  

But President Emmanuel Macron’s government is reluctant to acknowledge that there is a problem.

Interior minister Gerald Darmanin in July raised hackles when he downplayed the term "police violence", telling MPs that hearing it made him "choke".  

The family of a man who died after he was pinned to the ground by police in a chokehold, demanded an apology.

Mr Darmanin is now backing a new law that would ban people from posting videos of police on social media.

Opinion polls show that a majority of French people trust and respect the people who enforce the law for them. And the police often show remarkable restraint during protests in which they are frequently insulted and pelted with a variety of projectiles.

But those who despise the French police have, of course, a solid base for their contempt.  

Trying to explain to my now 16-year-old that the police are important and that we would be in a bad way without them is not easy.

During the recent blocus at his lycee, he heard one cop shouting at his classmates: “Rentrez chez vous, sales pedes” (go home, you filthy queers!).