France: Police & Firemen Afraid

​France's War against Firefighters and Police

1-9-18, * -- In France a silent war against firefighters and police is in full swing. On New Year's Eve, France's Minister of the Interior, Gerard Collomb thanked the 140,000 police officers, soldiers, firefighters and civil security associations who blocked any potential Islamic terrorist attack.

ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY THOUSAND? Yes - The entire French army (land forces only) consists of about 117,000 active-duty soldiers.  Therefore, ... well, you can see the significance and strong presence necessary to achieve peace on New Years!

In every big city, dozens of cars were burned, and in the suburbs, "youths" attacked the police. Even in central Paris, where the police were demonstrably visible, "incidents" resulted. 

In November 2017, the radio station Europe 1 released confidential data about attacks against firefighters:

1. "The figures of the National Observatory of Delinquency, released exclusively by Europe 1, show a 17% increase in assaults against firefighters in 2016. 2,280 firefighters were assaulted in 2016, compared to 1,939 in 2015. ...firefighters are confronted on a daily basis with increasingly extreme situations. With 366 assaults in 2016, the Paris area is the most affected region, after Aquitaine, in southwest France, with 406 reported assaults. As a result, the police are called to certain areas just to protect the firefighters." 
2. According to Bruno Retailleau, MP, head of a parliamentary commission on security forces: "in 2016, half the gendarmes officers (part of the Ministry of Defense) that were injured, were injured by assaults. As for the police, weapons-caused injuries for police officers on the ground skyrocketed by 60%." Five months after a law was passed to ease the rules of self-defense for police officers, the news channel LCI revealed that the use of firearms by police officers had sharply increased, including "intimidation or summons" (where officers shoot in the air or at the ground), which was up 89%. This type of gunfire is "justified and justifiable," noted the IGPN (internal affairs department) in a confidential note of July 2017, also revealed by LCI.
3. On January 3, 2018, the headline in Le Parisien was, "When the Police Frighten Nobody." The same day, Lydia Guirous, speaker of the opposition party, Les Republicains, declared: "In the suburbs, the authority of the State no longer exists, and impunity predominates. The police are in a state of fear and the means [to respond] is lacking. This sense of impunity must be broken".

As usual, politicians are minimizing the problem. The government does not consider the spread of urban violence to be terrorism. On January 1, 2018, the Minister of the Interior was explaining away the violence against the police and firefighters as the consequence of "social injustice." After he congratulated himself for the "peaceful" New Year's Eve, Collomb talked the same rubbish as usual: namely, that the Muslim "youths" involved in destruction and violence are not criminals, rather they are victims of their "environment":

"I think it is those neighborhoods that need to be changed. Those huge apartment blocks in the suburbs represent an inhuman environment generating violence... I do not think these neighborhoods can stay that way."

SUICIDES at an all time high:

• In November 2017, in a single week, five police officers committed suicide in different French cities.
• On December 3, 2017, a police officer committed suicide inside the precinct of Alençon, in southern France. 
• On December 5, 2017, a security officer of the Ministry of Labor committed suicide in the parking lot of a Gendarmerie precinct.
• Between January 1, and December 1, 2017 forty-seven police officers and 16 gendarmes took their own lives.

* Excerpted full report here: 
www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11697/france-firefighters-police