Policing of France's school protests clouds Macron's final months and sparks uproar

France is facing a nationwide wave of unrest as thousands of teenagers protest for better-resourced schools, blockading high schools and joining marches that have sometimes turned violent.

The demonstrations have brought young protesters into confrontation with one of Europe's largest internal security forces, deployed by the government of an unpopular outgoing president.

The clashes, unfolding almost daily outside schools and on the streets, have led to mass arrests and hundreds of injuries, fuelling an uproar in a country with a centuries-old tradition of protest. Even some police officers have criticised the government's handling of the demonstrations.

Discontent shadows Macron's final months

For President Emmanuel Macron, who is due to leave office in May, the unrest is an unwelcome end to a decade in power. He has faced successive waves of protests that have eroded his popularity and fuelled criticism of his government's use of police against demonstrators.

The backlash over the high school protests has been particularly intense, partly because the vast majority of the 8,000 people arrested in recent weeks are under 18. Police crowd-control weapons have also been blamed for causing life-changing injuries to some young protesters.

The students' demand for better-resourced schools, particularly in poorer Paris suburbs and other towns and cities, has drawn public sympathy as France grapples with record poverty and public debt.

Police, however, say violent rioters have exploited the demonstrations to attack officers, throwing rocks, fireworks and other projectiles while setting fires and damaging property. According to the government, more than 900 police officers and nearly 150 teachers and other school staff members have been injured.

France's history of protest helps explain why some demonstrations have escalated into confrontations between riot police and demonstrators who arrive prepared to fight, wearing masks and black clothing, said Walid Hrar, a police officer and union representative in Paris's northern suburbs.

“This is the country of the French Revolution. Everyone boasts about it, in fact. Some political parties don’t hesitate to say that we need to disobey the law. That’s what Robespierre and other revolutionaries taught us in 1789,” he said.

“France always tends to react rather than anticipate,” he added. “In other words, we’re always going to extremes.”

Police weapons come under scrutiny

Police have faced mounting scrutiny over their use of so-called non-lethal crowd-control weapons, including grenades and other projectiles, tear gas, water cannons and riot shields equipped with powerful strobe lights.

“We’re sending poorly equipped, untrained public security police officers to violent demonstrations who are likely to become agitated very quickly out of anger and fear,” said Jean-Marie Godard, an author who specialises in French policing.

Hrar said some of his colleagues lacked specialised crowd-control training and appropriate equipment.

“We send them in because we need the manpower, so we have officers wearing uniforms that aren’t flame-resistant. And if you’re hit by a firework mortar and your uniform isn’t flame-resistant, you can catch fire. We also have officers with worn-out helmets. We have shields that aren’t suitable,” he said.

He added that officers who had not been authorised to use crowd-control projectiles and grenades sometimes struggled to keep attackers at a safe distance.

“So unfortunately we make do,” he said. “You’ll inevitably end up in direct physical confrontation. When that happens, there are injuries on both sides.”

His Alliance police union announced this week that it was filing a legal complaint against the state, accusing the authorities of putting officers' lives at risk. The union alleged that officers were receiving vague and contradictory orders, leaving them “isolated, betrayed, abandoned, exposed to violence”.

Investigations into alleged police misconduct mount

French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said this week that security forces had deployed crowd-control weapons at least 18,000 times during the protests, mostly smoke and tear gas, but also projectiles and grenades.

Among them was a deafening grenade launched from a launcher, which Nunez said had been used “about 40 times” before he suspended its use against high school students following an incident in which a 15-year-old lost a hand.

“All this equipment, all these forces, all these intermediate weapons, are used whenever necessary, with proportionality, to mark an escalation of the response, to keep people at a distance or sometimes to put them out of action,” he said.

Nunez insisted that the rules governing the use of riot-control projectiles were “very clear, very strict”.

“We avoid everything above the neck,” he said.

Nevertheless, an officer suspected of firing a projectile that partially blinded a 16-year-old was charged with aggravated violence this week.

The case is among 36 investigations into alleged police misconduct reported as of Tuesday, Nunez said. Four concern injuries described as “mutilating”, while another six involve “significant injuries”. The remaining cases include allegations of assault, insults and suspected sexual assaults, including an accusation that an officer attempted to drown a protester.

Experts say policing varies by protest movement

France has more than 250,000 police officers and gendarmes.

Sebastian Roché, a policing specialist at France's National Centre for Scientific Research, said the deployment and conduct of security forces could depend on the government's political priorities.

He said police had been less tolerant of the teenage protesters than they had been of farmers, a powerful lobby in France, who previously doused government buildings with manure, blocked roads and set fires.

“It’s the political definition of the movement that defines the police response,” Roché said.

Public perceptions of the police also shift over time and are shaped by images circulating on social media, Hrar said. He noted that officers had been praised for their bravery during the 2015 terrorist attacks in France.

“When you bombard people every single day with images of police intervening with batons, shields and tear gas, you’re inevitably going to create a negative impression,” he said.