France wants Macron to send in the army

Nearly three quarters of French people think it’s time for President Macron to send in the army to restore order to the towns and cities that have been sacked in recent days. According to a poll published yesterday, 70 per cent of people said they wanted the military to be deployed to areas that have been looted, vandalised and firebombed since police shot dead a 17-year-old in western Paris on Tuesday morning.

The teenager, Nahel, was laid to rest on Saturday afternoon but it remains to be seen whether the furious reaction to his death – for which a policeman has been charged with voluntary manslaughter – will abate in the coming days. There have been appeals for calm from celebrities, sports stars and imams but for many of the rioters their motivation is not justice but greed and the thrill of destruction.

Scenes of teenagers looting in Paris, Marseille and other cities have angered all but the most radical, such as the Green MP Sandrine Rousseau. ‘What if looting had something to do with poverty…with the feeling of relegation?’ she mused in a tweet. Rousseau is in the minority among law-biding citizens of the Republic. The majority believe that the rioters need to be brought to heel, and the best way of doing that is by sending in the army. This is particularly true among women – 74 per cent backed the idea, compared to 66 per cent of men.

The police would probably welcome the presence of troops. After four consecutive nights of running battles with rioters, they are close to breaking point. Rudy Mannna, a police spokesman for the Bouches-du-Rhône region, described his officers as being in ‘an incredible state of physical and mental exhaustion’. Most have been working 14- or 15-hour shifts in heatwave temperatures, carrying up to 12kg of protective equipment and clothing. On average they walk and run 10 miles during their shift.

Police reinforcements are being sent to Lyon this evening, as they are Marseille, which was subjected to appalling mayhem on Friday night. A police spokesman described the evening as ‘apocalyptic’, adding: ‘There were scenes of guerrilla warfare all over Marseille city centre.’

The most serious incident on Friday night occurred in Vaulx-en-Velin, a suburb of Lyon, when a gunman on the back of motorbike fired a shotgun at police officers. On previous evenings, rioters armed with guns shot at CCTV cameras but this incident was the first time the police had been specifically targeted. Four officers were hit and although none were seriously wounded it is an escalation in violence that has alarmed the authorities.

As if the police haven’t got enough on, today was the start of the Tour de France, the highlight of France’s sporting calendar and an event that normally requires the presence of 28,000 police officers, gendarmes and firefighters as cyclists pedal across the country.  

The opening stage of this year’s race began in Bilbao, Spain, and the peloton will reach France on Monday. It’s not rioters attacking the peloton that police are worried about, it is ‘angry environmentalists’, and for that reason they are determined to maintain a strong presence at every stage of the three-week race.

That may be another reason for Macron to consider sending in the army if the rioting continues into a second week. It would be a last resort, and an admission that he is struggling to retake control of the country, but better the army in the cities than the anarchists.