Just-Us Justice

True story: years ago my wife Christine found herself visiting a cousin out in Villiers-le-Bel – the northern Paris suburb where riots protesting the police went down this week – and some random cat asked her the time. Seconds later, dude casually flashed the shotgun underneath the sleeve of his coat, explaining all about who he was waiting on and why this person had some get-back coming his way. Well. Bowling for Columbine had a lot to say about the lack of deaths by handgun in France, but don’t sleep. Monday night at least, the youth jumped off some firearm violence against French police.

My 2-year-old attends nursery not in Paris, but ten minutes away in nearby Arcueil where Christine and I lived when I first moved to France. (These crèches are so notoriously difficult to secure that we haven’t bothered to switch him to one in our neighborhood now; and there’s no space.) Point being, Tuesday morning there was a car with all its windows shattered in a parking lot I pass through every week to get to this crèche (just like the one above; wish I’d had my camera), a result of their local protesting over what went down in Villiers-le-Bel the night before. Heads did the same thing in this hood when President Sarkozy was elected, trashing a few cars, spraypainting “Nique Sarko” (fuck Sarkozy) graf over the ruins.

So what went down in Villiers-le-Bel? Shades of the weeks-long rioting back in November 2005, two teenagers were killed as a result of interaction with the local police, setting off the powder keg of the young African and Arab immigrant population. Larami and Moushin accidentally crashed their motorbike into a police car; their families say the cops rammed into them intentionally then left them for dead. An uprising sparked immediately. Over 100 officers were wounded by locals taking it to the streets, torching cars, schools, a library and police station; 30 cops were hit by shotgun pellets and one lost an eye. By Wednesday, over 1,000 cops were deployed and 39 people arrested, diffusing the situation. Sarkozy put the photo-op political cap on things by visiting injured police in the hospital and vowing justice. But immigrated suburban youth here have been dealing with French just-us justice for decades now, something Algerian rapper Rim’k of 113 undoubtedly emcees about on Famille Nombreuse, his latest solo album released this week.