France: The Riots are Spreading after a Police Officer is under investigation for Shooting a Teenager

President Emmanuel Macron is trying to contain the growing crisis after midnight riots in France sparked by the fatal police shooting of a North African teenager during a police check in a French suburb, Reuters reported.

Police made 180 arrests during the second night of unrest, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said, as public anger spilled onto the streets in towns and cities across the country.

Macron held a crisis meeting with senior ministers over the shooting and Darmanen later announced that 40,000 police would be deployed across the country, including 5,000 in the Paris region, on Thursday night to quell the unrest.

This is almost four times the number mobilized on Wednesday evening.

"The state's response must be extremely firm," Darmanin said.

Both he and Prime Minister Elizabeth Borne have ruled out declaring a state of emergency for now.

The shooting of the 17-year-old named Nael took place in Nanterre, on the western outskirts of Paris. The local prosecutor said investigators have opened a formal manslaughter investigation against the police officer involved.

Reuters notes that under France's legal system, being placed under formal investigation is similar to an indictment in Anglo-Saxon jurisdictions.

"Based on the collected evidence, the prosecutor considers that the legal conditions for the use of the weapon have not been met," the prosecutor announced at a press conference.

On Wednesday, Macron said the shooting was inexcusable. When convening the extraordinary session, he also condemned the riots.

"The last few hours have been marked by scenes of violence against police stations, but also against schools and town halls, and therefore the institutions of the republic and these scenes are completely unjustified," Macron said, opening the emergency meeting.

A video shared on social media and confirmed by Reuters shows two police officers next to a Mercedes AMG car, one of them shooting at the teenager at close range as he drives away. The boy died shortly afterwards from his wounds, the local prosecutor's office said.

The teenager, who was too young to hold a full driving license in France, was driving illegally, a source familiar with the investigation said. The Nanterre prosecutor said he was known to police for failing to stop a vehicle after a signal.

Prosecutors say the boy failed to comply with officers' commands on Tuesday.

Tuesday's killing was the third fatal shooting in such circumstances in France since the start of the year, down from a record 13 last year, a national police spokesman said.

There were three such killings in 2021 and two in 2020, according to Reuters data, which shows the majority of victims since 2017 have been black or of Arab origin.

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