PerspectiveThe French City Zones Where Police Rarely Escape Unscathed
Gavin Mortimer, a British historian living in France, writers in The Spectator that the claim that there are “no go” zones in Paris and other French cities – that is, areas where the police does not patrol for fear of encountering violence — is wrong. “There aren’t any no-go zones in France for the police,” he writes. “There are, however, a growing number of zones that the police enter knowing their chances of emerging unscathed are slight. In the parlance of politicians and the press, these districts are described as sensible (sensitive) or défavorisé (disadvantaged), and last year the government launched an ‘urban reconquest’ of sixty of the most troublesome with the deployment of foot patrols by police.” Mortimer quotes the French historian Georges Bensoussan, who wrote that in many French urban areas, a parallel society has taken root.
In December 2015, Donald Trump claimed parts of the French capital were no-go zones for the police. “Paris is no longer the same city it was,” said the then-Republican presidential hopeful. “They have sections in Paris that are radicalized… The police refuse to go in there.” His remarks echoed a similar claim made by Fox News earlier in the year. In response the mayor of the city, Anne Hidalgo, was outraged, and even muttered about pursuing legal action for the “honor of Paris.”
Gavin Mortimer writers in The Spectator that Trump was wrong. There aren’t any no-go zones in France for the police. There are, however, a growing number of zones that the police enter knowing their chances of emerging unscathed are slight. In the parlance of politicians and the press, these districts are described as sensible (sensitive) or défavorisé (disadvantaged), and last year the government launched an ‘urban reconquest’ of sixty of the most troublesome with the deployment of foot patrols by police.
Mortimer writes:
The police wear body armor because the men who control these sensitive zones – to the misery of the majority of law-abiding inhabitants – are at war with the Republic and anyone in uniform is regarded as an enemy. Even off-duty policemen are at risk, as with the case in Grenoble last year when a dozen off-duty officers returning from a night out were ambushed and beaten by forty hooded young men from a nearby estate. The same city witnessed three nights of rioting in March after the deaths of two youths in a car chase. The guerrilla warfare was in evidence over the summer in Paris when a fire crew was lured to a blaze south of Paris and attacked by a 30-strong mob. But it isn’t just confined to the big cities. In Quimper, Brittany, dozens of youths ran riot on Tuesday evening, burning cars and attacking police officers and firefighters after one of their number was arrested for riding a motorbike without a helmet.
In January 2017 the historian Georges Bensoussan published Une France Soumise (a submissive France), which followed-up a book he’d edited 15 years earlier, called Les Territoires perdus de la Republique (the Republic’s lost territories). In the sequel, Bensoussan interviewed social workers, teachers, nurses and members of the emergency services who described how a parallel society has taken root in France.
