Four Police Officers Set On Fire, French President Responds, Why Can’t Our President…
Four French police officers were set on fire.
Four Police Officers Set On Fire, French President Responds, Why Can’t Our President Respond Like This?
It is being called a coordinated attack on police. Four officers were struck with Molotov cocktails critically wounding two and sending all 4 to the hospital. A gang of thugs, most wearing masks, pelted the two patrol cars with gasoline-filled bombs in a notoriously crime-ridden area near Paris. The Grande Borne housing complex is known for drug dealing, thievery, and general lawlessness, despite the fact that it is just outside of Paris.
The police were riding in two-man cars and working a detail in the housing project, monitoring surveillance cameras that have been installed to quell the crime problem. Sources say that as many as a dozen assailants threw gasoline bombs from all sides and effectively trapped the police in a large swath of burning gasoline. The injured officers were able to call for reinforcements and were rescued when reinforcements arrived. The assailants had fled the area prior to the backup units arriving.
The officers were watching a set of cameras that monitor a stretch of road prone to street-level robberies. Anti-government protests have resulted in a growing number of random attacks on police. The rioters view police as the front line of government and lash out in response to economic and labor policies that they feel are unfair.
This latest incident is probably not linked to anti-government protestors but rather, drug gangs in the area. Grande Borne is a housing project built in the 1960s and in recent years has succumbed to drug gangs and ever-rising crime.
French President, Francois Hollande, vowed to find the perpetrators of the attack and bring them to justice. He went on to call the event intolerable as it endangered the lives of officers who protect the population.
The French Prime Minister called the attack cowardly and extremely serious.
The mayor of the area where Grande Borne said there needs to be an end to drug dealing in the complex because that is what the cameras interfere with.
Whether this attack stems from street-level drug dealers or anti-government protestors, it is unacceptable. Whether these were French police or American, it is unacceptable. Refusal to accept accountability for one’s actions has led to a fracture between citizens and police that must be addressed in order to move forward in the future.
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