Urban pacification police squads will be deployed to a drug gang-plagued French suburb on Friday night after a mass brawl involving tens of dozens people saw five people shot.
France’s Interior Minister decried a “a shooting at a restaurant, which ended in a fight between rival gangs” on national television Friday morning, after five people were seriously injured as hundreds of people looked on in a suburb of Poitiers late Thursday night. He said the level of violence is at a “tipping point” in the “Mexicanization” of France.
The shooting, which was described by the politician as drug gang settling of scores took place around 11pm Halloween night outside a burger bar in a Poitiers in a neighbourhood known for drug crime. French broadcaster BFMTV states a car pulled up and a number of shots were fired at the eatery, the gunmen making off. Large numbers of people streamed into the area, which descended into a brawl.
Le Figaro cites police sources who said: “several hundred people on site, of all kinds, onlookers coming down from the buildings… A “big fight started, until the police arrived”. As many as 600 people were present including onlookers, although those most actively involved in the brawling “equipped with all sorts of weapons” were said to number some 50 to 60.
Police quickly responded and upon their arrival found some of the gunshot victims on the ground. Officers were then set upon themselves by what French media calls “local youths”, however, and ultimately police had to deploy tear gas to disperse the groups.
The victims, all teenagers, include a 15-year-old boy identified as Anis S. , who was shot in the head and is described in French-language reports as critically unwell and “brain dead”.
12 bullet holes were found in the front of the burger bar and “around ten” spent .22 calibre cartridges found on the ground. No arrests have yet been made.
Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, part of the newly appointed Macron government that followed the President’s disastrous gamble at snap elections earlier this year, said the violent drug gangs “have no limits”. Dramatically comparing the deteriorating law and order situation in France to South America, he told French television: “They are traffickers who use the most ferocious means to settle scores and satisfy their desire for profit.
“It’s just that it’s not happening in South America, but in Rennes and Poitiers. We are at a tipping point. We have the choice between general mobilization and the “Mexicanization” of the country.”
Police are ready to deter further violence tonight, with the local force warning they will be deploying additional forces. The prefect said among those extra reinforcements would be officers of the CRS 8 and CRS84, “a unit specializing in combating urban violence”. Per a publication of French national police, the CRS units are “specifically organized, equipped and trained” groups of officers who are available to deploy at immediate notice 24 hours a day for “maintaining and restoring order… fight against urban violence and riots”.
