The New York Time has found their way to save Chirac and his governmental buddies: blame the Cops!
PARIS, Nov. 7 – The local police assigned to France’s poor suburbs who are the objects of scorn of the rioting youths are often inexperienced and ill equipped, according to a recent report from the National Commission on Ethics in the Security Services.
The commission reported in April that a lack of training led to behavior that was at best clumsy and at worst racist in those neighborhoods with large immigrant populations. It criticized the fact that French police officers have rarely been punished for misdeeds and lamented the lack of ethnic diversity in all branches of the police. That lack may be compounding the racial connotations of the civil unrest, with youths of North African descent pitted against a predominantly white police force.
Nowhere within the article is the name "Chirac" mentioned. Of course, when the subject was Abu Ghraid, the problems went all the way to the White House. In France, any issues that the police have in dealing with people who are, based on 13 nights of riots, animals and scum, stop at the police officers, and, based on my reading, on the individual officers themselves. The Hazy Grey Lady doesn’t even seem to take shots or find issues with most command and control personnel.
Nor do they seem to find fault with the actual rioters. Figures.
Give them more after school programs!
I’m a little tired of hearing the mantra that “ethnic diversity” is the answer when people feel mistreated by the police. This is the ultimate racists argument. If only police of the same ethnicity can understand these rioters, then they would behave and stop all criminal activity if France hired African police officers? Maybe we should have a set of French laws and a set of African laws so that everybody will be comfortable with what’s expected of them, i.e. human decency. Guess that’s a completely different thing depending on where you come from.