French President Emmanuel Macron is counting on law enforcement to restore order after almost a week of nationwide riots touched off by a police officer’s fatal shooting of a teenager.
Macron met with key Cabinet ministers into the evening hours on Sunday in his latest attempt to craft a response to the violence, which is testing his authority and ability to carry out reforms. He’s keeping some 45,000 police, special forces and armored vehicles deployed to contain clashes that have left hundreds of public buildings and shops damaged or ransacked in cities, including Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Strasbourg.
While tensions eased overnight into Sunday, the shooting of Nahel, a 17-year-old of North African descent whose last name has been withheld by authorities, remains a flash point in a crisis over racism and inequality in France that’s drawing comparisons with America’s reaction to the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
