Police in France are harming young people on scooters

Since at least April of this year there've been several deaths or injuries, related to police in France stopping young people riding motorised vehicles – mainly scooters.

Arguably the most well-known occurred when, while driving, 17-year-old Algerian boy Nahel Merzouk was stopped by police in a Paris suburb last June. Shortly after police shot him to death – sparking days of street protests in Paris that drew international attention to France’s colonial and racist past, as well as how that continues to permeate the country’s law enforcement.

Lesser known are deaths in the country that happened in April, August and September of this year, perhaps because they did not themselves lead to riots on the same scale. This of course makes the deaths no less important or tragic.

Three children, between the ages of 13 and 17, were injured in April when – while riding a scooter in Paris. Police chased them when they allegedly did not obey their traffic orders. One of their vehicles hit them. Given the severity of their subsequent injuries the youth are fortunate to be alive.

“When you take chase and you prepare to run over a vehicle with three minors on it,” said Arie Alimi, a lawyer retained by the families of the youth, “it can effectively be considered an assassination attempt”.

France, however, has also seen the presence of police alone leading to the death of young people on scooters.

That happened in August in the country’s western city of Limoges. A teenager and adult, in an attempt to avoid police preparing to stop them, collided with a (non-police) vehicle.

This invites the question: Are police making young people in France so afraid that they’re willing to take dangerous measures to circumvent them?

Certainly that’s a possibility for racialised youth in the country, routinely and unfairly targeted by French police. More generally young people may – in light of the harm they’ve caused young people on scooters – see French police as preying on them, imperilling their lives or safety on the road.

Finally and most recently there’s the death of 16-year-old Sefa Sahin, which happened this month in yet another Paris suburb. A Turkish-French national, Sahin was hit by a police car while another was chasing him.

It isn’t apparent whether French lawmakers or authorities are intending, at present, to launch a deep investigation into the connection between the presence of police and the deaths and injuries of young people on scooters. This is all the more pressing given that in certain such instances police have been investigated criminally for their actions.

How many more times must this happen before France implements effective policy to stop police from harming more young people?

There’s perhaps a negative bias within the police force against young people that has not been addressed – manifesting itself in the killings and injuries of youth instead of being dealt with in a responsible manner, such as a comprehensive training of police or doing away with whole parts of it that harm young people.

Shortly before the summer a public vote was held in Paris to determine whether to ban e-scooters. An overwhelming majority – 90 percent – voted in favour of it and formally took effect this month.

Not only the ban but the public annoyance and frustration surrounding e-scooters that, in significant part, led to it may have emboldened police. At some level their logic, crudely, might be: “Since the public doesn’t like people on motorbikes, many of whom are young people, then they won’t mind if we mistreat them”.

Police, much as they may enjoy public esteem – notwithstanding the negative press they often receive, especially following high-profile murders such as of African-American man George Floyd – they are not primarily moral exemplars but agents of the state. And where the state has a long history of mistreating others they deem “inferior” or “less than human”, it retains the propensity to keep doing so.

In the case of France, stopping this means taking – perhaps with the guidance or even pressure from the international community – an honest look at itself, examining to what extent the country’s colonial legacy still causes it to dehumanise people.

This surely includes racialised groups, the main victims of France’s colonial rule. It also includes youth who, as a function of dehumanisation writ larger, are not seen as “mature enough” to be treated as full human beings.

They should never have to ask police permission for this. They are entitled to it.