Illustration of urban violence that occurred on March 10 in Rillieux-la-Pape near Lyon (Rhône).
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PHILIPPE DESMAZES / AFP
The Lyon metropolitan area has been the scene in recent weeks of several episodes of urban violence.
Car and bus fires, deterioration of urban furniture or public buildings, clashes with the police, have multiplied in La Duchère, Bron, Vénissieux and Rillieux-la-Pape.
Sébastian Roché, research director at the CNRS and author of the book
De la police en Démocratie
(Grasset), deciphers
these phenomena
for
20 minutes
.
In recent weeks, several towns in the Lyon metropolitan area have been the scene of urban violence.
Latest episode: Saturday evening, four cars and a TCL bus were burned by rioters in Rillieux-la-Pape.
How to explain that poor neighborhoods regularly burn up?
This is the question we asked Sébastian Roché, Director of Research at CNRS and teacher at Sciences-Po Grenoble-Alpes university.
He is also the author of the book
De la police en Démocratie
(Grasset), in which he is particularly interested in the legitimacy and comparative governance of the police, in community policing and in police-population relations, and in comparative analysis of the determinants of delinquency.
What do these repeated episodes of urban violence translate into?
As a preamble, it should be noted that the expression “urban violence” remains insufficient.
It is a "portmanteau word" to define all that it encompasses.
Behind it we talk about the phenomenon of riots, rebellion, collective actions during which there is degradation and destruction of individual or collective goods and sometimes, physical clashes.
This violence remains a subject little studied.
For example, there is no analytical document to accurately establish their origins.
The declarations of the authorities or political leaders, formulated with more or less finesse, remain above all moral postures.
They do not constitute real explanations.
I dare to compare it: it is as if we were talking about fighting the coronavirus without having an information base on the virus.
It would be considered impossible.
If we were nevertheless to put forward one or more explanations, what would they be?
Geographically, we can see that the facts have not changed much since the end of the 1970s. The first urban rodeos appeared in 1979 in Villeurbanne, Vaulx-en-Velin, Vénissieux, in the same districts as today.
In 1981, we witnessed the first “hot” summers with overflows in these same peripheral towns.
Each time, we see that the riots are associated with areas of poverty.
Overall, we are in territories where socio-economic problems are concentrated, a whole bunch of disadvantages: a high rate of unemployment, few job opportunities, precariousness, school problems, etc.
Added to this is the following observation: people of foreign origin, who live in these territories, are more exposed to bad police practices such as face checks.
But France is no exception.
Elsewhere, in the United States or Great Britain for example, this is also the case.
In short, we are in disadvantaged territories where individuals face very often negative experiences with the police.
The conjunction of the two creates an effect that accumulates over time.
And the slightest event can trigger a riot?
Yes, that's what happened in 2005 in Clichy-sous-Bois when the two teenagers, who had taken refuge in a transformer, died of electrocution.
The statements of the prefect and the DDSP at the time were likely to ignite the powder.
The lack of sincerity on the part of the public authorities, whether voluntary or not, has not helped matters.
The inhabitants felt left behind.
For years, we have had a pot on gas that constantly boils.
It heats up and it ends up farting.
The revolts are triggered by elements that are repeated over and over again: scooter accidents during a police check, checks that turn into a tragedy, etc.
Mayor LR of Rillieux-la-Pape explained that the riots in his town were the work of “drug trafficking professionals” who did not accept the work of the police.
This time, therefore, it is not about the aforementioned element ...
This is the explanation he puts forward but in the absence of analytical capacity at the level of the metropolis of Lyon, I see moral declarations.
For me this hypothesis seems unlikely.
Why ?
The trade in illicit products is an economic activity, although it is illegal.
And for it to thrive, you need tranquility.
It is a very bad idea to go looking for a form of provocation that could trigger police reactions.
We do not know of a deal system that seeks confrontation with the police and I remain unconvinced by this approach.
You have observed and studied the behavior of agents in the field in Lyon and Grenoble for the purposes of a book in which you draw a comparison with Germany.
How is the French situation different from that across the Rhine?
In France, the police have a very aggressive approach in poor neighborhoods.
This impetus was given by Nicolas Sarkozy.
When there are incidents in a neighborhood, the police are immediately suspected by the inhabitants, even before we know if this is the case or not.
The cause is structural: today, there is mistrust of the police when they are supposed to restore people's confidence and protect them.
This confidence is greatly diminished.
This is not at all the case in Germany, where there are no urban riots.
The inhabitants of the neighborhoods, whether of Turkish or German origin, place the same confidence in the police.
There, she has more of an assistance mission that we do not know so clearly in France.
Can the return of community policing (abolished in 2003) be a lever to restore this confidence?
The one we knew in France is similar to what is practiced in Germany even if it is not quite the same thing.
The daily security police, as Emmanuel Macron had presented it in his presidential campaign program, looked a lot like it.
But in the end, this is not the path he took ... Afterwards, the problems observed in poor neighborhoods do not come only from the attitude of the police.
As I said, they emanate from a conjunction of a whole bunch of elements.
Finally in democracies, order comes from social cohesion.
Miscellaneous
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Bordeaux
Bordeaux: "We are going to harass the deal points", declares Darmanin who announces 140 additional police officers in the city
Lyon
Society
Police
Urban violence