It's pretty ironic that the day that Jean_Louis Borloo, the architect of right-wing social policy of the heart, is to 'officialise' and maximize his support for Sarkozy, the riot breaks out in Gare de Nord, all but erasing the impact of the endorsement.
With all due respect to the commuters and shop-keepers of Paris' busiest train station who got stuck in the middle of the usual cat-and-mouse game, its just as well that this event happened. French media culture has an uncanny way of not addressing the events of November 2005, most likely because it seems so intractable. Now it is here in the day's ether and the electorate can do with it as they like.
But what seems to blow back every time, is that the problem with violence in working class neighborhoods is above all a policing one. Whether you look at the amateur video of the school round-ups last week, or the riots yesterday, the cops always seem to be stuck between freezing in place or going totally ape-shit.
The cops seem conflicted and the hoodlum kids take perfect advantage of them every time. If this is in fact true, it doesn't mean that Sarkozy's troops (until two days ago when he resigned his Minister post) are either too harsh or too timid, it just means that they're poorly trained and a little lost, which means something altogether else regarding Sarkozy.
On France Inter's lunchtime news today, a security scholar said as much. Policing in France suffers from a lack of quality, he said, not quantity.
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