France vows urban crackdown

Mob attack on policewoman outrages President Macron

The French government vowed a crackdown on urban violence Tuesday after shocking video footage emerged of a policewoman being beaten on New Year’s Eve.

She was one of two officers attacked by a crowd of youths after police were called to a party in the Paris suburb of Champigny-sur-Marne, in an assault President Emmanuel Macron called “a cowardly and criminal lynching.”

A third officer was beaten up Monday while trying to inspect a stolen scooter inside a sprawling housing estate in the suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois.

More than a thousand cars were burned across France on New Year’s Eve, a ritual for youths living in deprived highrise suburbs.

“This violent society cannot continue in the years to come. It must be stopped,” Interior Minister Gerard Collomb told Europe 1 radio on Tuesday, calling the attacks on police “unacceptable.”

Officers had been called to clear a crowd of about 300400 people attempting to see in 2018 at a warehouse party in Champigny-sur-Marne.

They fired tear gas after “a group of particularly violent individuals laid into the police,” local security chief Jean-Yves Oses said, with revelers beating and kicking two officers.

Videos of the policewoman writhing on the floor as she is kicked by the crowd, as well as revelers flipping over a car, have gone viral on social media.

Two people were detained on suspicion of vandalism, but no one has been arrested for attacking the police. Macron vowed that the culprits would be “found and punished.”

A total 1,031 cars were torched across France as the country welcomed the New Year – up from 935 a year ago – while arrests rose from 456 to 510, the interior ministry said.

Collomb said reforms were needed to improve lives in “pauperized, gusseted” French suburbs, which have long suffered a reputation for violence and poverty.

“These are neighborhoods that must change,” Collomb said, ahead of new pilot schemes in local policing set to begin next month following a large consultation with security forces.

French police have long suffered testy relations with youths in poor immigrant-heavy suburbs. An assault on a young man by police in Aulnay-sousBois – which led to officers being charged, including for rape after a truncheon was shoved up the youth’s anus – sparked unrest last year.