Law, Order and Politics in France

...Policemen and gendarmes share the task of preserving law and order in France, assisted by unarmed municipal officers...

...In the 1980s, antidiscrimination youth movements, riding the wave of François Mitterrand's presidency, charged that the police and gendarmes were racists...

...The Internet has proved a useful means of communication that circumvents the hierarchy...

...On November 21, gendarmes' wives held public rallies to detail the difficulties their husbands daily encounter on the job, and the social ostracization their families face...

...For one thing, the gendarmes and policemen recruited in recent years are men and women from a variety of ethnic and social backgrounds...

...Gendarmes, though, find it harder to make themselves heard...

...They also have a psychological component: people tend to feel better protected...

...As a general but by no means watertight rule, the police patrol urban areas and the gendarmes patrol rural areas and towns with less than 100,000 inhabitants...

...Its commanding officers are recruited from the Armed Forces and it is under the control of the Defense Ministry, although its policing functions are defined by the Interior Ministry...

...The second was in 2000, when he walked out of the Jospin government to mark his opposing the devolution plans for Corsica, which he sees as an attempt to appease extremist regionalist movements on the island...

...It is fairly common to hear policemen in democratic countries rail against magistrates...

...Thus far it has barely won 5-6 per cent of the vote in any election, but at present it is pulling a comfortable 10 per cent in the opinion polls and some think it has yet to peak...

...They are no longer associated with breaking up marches by students or trade unionists, as in the 1970s...

...Nevertheless, health services and law-enforcement forces are understaffed and underequipped...

...Various police unions have set up watch committees to monitor the impact of the new law on crime prevention...

...So they are out to pressure the two main contenders, Jospin and Chirac, into confronting law-and-order questions—which may well form one of the main subjects in the coming election...

...And the gendarmes and the policemen, for their part, seem keen to give them a helping hand...

...tragedy, albeit on a lesser scale, a petrochemical plant in a southern suburb of Toulouse exploded...

...Questioned about this, they answered that when they entered these areas they were shot at or stoned, and their vehicles were set on fire...

...But not the Communist Party, which has two ministers in the current government and is hardly given to being overly tender with the police...

...A blunt, forthright man, Chevènement differs from Socialists, Communists and especially the Greens (whom he openly despises) in that he holds what one might describe as "nononsense" views on crime prevention and education...

...Vigipirate's activation on previous occasions seemed to reduce thefts, robberies and petty crime in urban areas...

...Websites and discussion groups allow gendarmes to exchange experiences—and plan ways of making themselves heard...

...Gendarmes have noted that some of the urban offenders appear to migrate to the countryside, where security measures are much slacker than in town—confirming the need for stringent steps to be taken everywhere...

...Scrambling to cash in on the new attitude, it accused the Prime Minister of "underestimating the law-and-order issue" in his December 5 television interview...

...A lot can happen over the next few months to drive what seems paramount at the moment out of people's minds...

...The various protest actions they organized throughout the country in the first week of December took the government by surprise, and revealed efficient coordination...

...First there were the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington...

...In the eyes of the two men, there is no reason why lessons should not be learned from France's national antiterrorist plan, Vigipirate, in place since September 11...

...Worse, guns and bulletproof vests had to be pooled because there were not enough to go round...

...Premiums are being offered to those who find jobs...

...Today a major complaint is the feeling of insecurity, even among those in their 20s and 30s...

...Both Madelin and Chevènement are democrats...

...Two policemen plus four other people were killed by a man who had been arrested and then was released, pending trial, on a magistrate's order...

...Authored by Julien Dray, a Left-wing Socialist, it recommended allowing the police to extend from one hour to three hours the period of detention without legal aid...

...So far the polls have credited him with barely 5 per cent of the vote, but he sees his mission as essentially speaking his mind and embarrassing Chirac in much the same way Chevènement embarrasses Jospin...

...Investigations suggested that the explosion was due to an accident rather than a terrorist act...

...After the May 1968 uprisings, students and Left-wing so-called intellectuals who had hurled cobblestones at gendarmes, policemen and other lawkeeping forces from behind makeshift barricades, labeled them fascists...

...His egalitarian ideal is a powerful Republic able to offer everyone the same standards of safety and schooling...

...Locally, though, people were in deep shock and the impact on children, who only days earlier had witnessed the New York World Trade Center events on television, was particularly powerful...

...He is much weaker on economic and foreign policy, where his ideas tend to boil down to hostility toward the European Union and a deep attachment to a strong, centralized state and public sector...

...The economic cost remains to be assessed, though, since employers are being partly compensated for the loss in hours by state subsidies...

...A substantially larger number are thought likely to be attracted to a man they trust and know, Jean-Pierre Chevènement...

...Common as it is here to see virtually every profession openly push its demands at one point or another, it is rare to see policemen in uniform demonstrating, and quite unprecedented to have gendarmes protesting...

...For another, the nature of their work has changed over the past two decades...

...Experience had shown that they faced serious disciplinary measures and prosecution should one of their (usually youthful) assailants be wounded, let alone killed...

...He has a knack for talking squarely about grass-roots preoccupations, although he tends to be vague on the solutions to problems...

...those who employ them are receiving tax rebates...

...From the outset the gendarmerie, created in 1791, was given military status...

...The blast destroyed or damaged thousands of homes and took a heavy toll on infrastructure— roads, hospitals, schools, and one of the city's universities...

...Admittedly, quite a few of them were, and no doubt still are...

...He advocates firmer action against young delinquents and laments that during his days in office his bid to introduce a wide-ranging security plan received no backing...

...The firsttime was in 1990,whenhe quit Michel Rocard'sCabinetbecause he disapproved of the impending Gulf War...

...He has served as a defense and an interior minister, resigning from both posts in the wake of policy disagreements...

...Some are expected to turn to the farRight, but it has been weakened by a split and electorally is less attractive than it once was...

...Moreover, they noted people living in the dangerous areas have hesitated to call the police: Anyone who did was harassed or threatened afterward...

...This seems to have caught Jospin off balance...

...By and large, the nurses' and interns' demands have been sympathetically received by the public...

...But other handouts by the administration this past fall were made in response to strikes and demonstrations...

...Nurses are asking for the enlargement of their staffs, while medical interns, who often work 70 hours at a stretch without a break, want shorter shifts...

...A number of police stations and gendarmeries were so poorly equipped that officers brought their home computers to work...

...We shall succeed as we did with the 35-hour week"—which may be a somewhat rash analogy...

...On December 20, a study that had been commissioned by Jospin after the Assembly's action was made public...

...They prompted a series of measures intended to boost domestic consumption and stimulate back-to-work efforts...

...Discontent had been simmering for quite a while...

...Some urban districts became zones of lawlessness, with police and gendarmes accused of no longer patrolling them...

...In the days that followed, gendarmes in some districts put in for sick leaves en masse, alleging that their working conditions were undermining their health...

...True, some of the additional spending has resulted from unforeseen events...

...But they are worried about the crime rate and the risk of damaging social tensions should it be allowed to worsen...

...But a law that came into effect on January 1, 2001, reinforces habeas corpus, barely leavingthe first hour of detention to carry out investigations and question suspects without the presence of a lawyer...

...Janice Valls-Russell writes about French and Spanish affairs for the NL...

...The strongest impact, however, has been made by the sight of policemen and gendarmes taking to the streets, not to maintain order but to demonstrate...

...This consists of putting extra men on the beat, patrolling outside schools and other public buildings, beefing up patrols inside airports, railway stations, the underground and buses, and carrying out regular identity checks...

...Patrolling the streets on foot has made them a part of the urban landscape, except in difficult areas...

...And on December 18, the Constitutional Court denounced the government's decision to siphon off from the Social Security budget some of the funds allocated to help institute the 3 5 -hour week...

...In France as elsewhere, fears of an ensuing economic downturn came just as unemployment started rising again...

...The public mood has changed too...

...Neither of them wants to turn France into a police state...

...Most involved public service employees worried about how they would be affected by having the workweek reduced from 39 to 35 hours starting January 1. In the private sector the transition had already taken place and been relatively smooth, despite the fact that it was used as an opportunity to review labor practices...

...No one was surprised...

...and to offer insubstantial promises: On "insecurity, I ask to be trusted...

...Down the line, Madelin may pull some police and gendarme ballots...

...Increasingly of late, the gendarmes have sought to align their working conditions and pay with those of the police...

...A free-marketeer, Madelin leads the small Right-ofCenter Liberal Democracy Party and also intends to run for the presidency...

...Several members of the National Assembly who voted for the legislation now acknowledge that it may have made police work more difficult...

...Consequently, the French are now vastly more supportive of their law-andorder forces...

...Emergency aid to the city of Toulouse was quickly approved by the government...

...Meanwhile, observers have been speculating about how the police and the gendarmes themselves will vote come April...

...The immediate cause of this fall's protests was a series of attacks that targeted policemen and gendarmes...

...It further advocated holding possible accomplices or witnesses in custody while their statements were checked, instead of releasing them almost immediately as the new law requires...

...In several other incidents, police (and firemen) summoned for what appeared to be emergencies found themselves ambushed by violent gangs...

...Thirty people were killed and several hundred injured...

...Members of the Military are forbidden to demonstrate, go on strike or discuss their work in public, and this applies to gendarmes too—or did, until they found a way around it...

...Looking to the Spring Law, Order and Politics in France By Janice Valls-Russell Paris During a television interview on December 5, France's Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin finally admitted that he would "probably" be a candidate in this spring's presidential elections...

...A former Socialist, Chevènement heads the small Citizens' Movement Party...

...But these are different times...

...His intentions had been signaled by the largess his administration began to distribute in the fall—to the dismay of Finance Minister Laurent Fabius, who warned in midNovember against a "slackening of budgetary discipline...

...In mid-November, senior gendarmerie officers warned Defense Minister Alain Richard that the policemen's pursuit of better working conditions was creating a mood of unrest in their ranks as well...

...The magistrates, say the police and gendarmes, are too lax...

...They also felt they had their hands tied...

...Policemen and gendarmes both complained about long hours and a lack of consideration, such as being told on a Friday evening to report for a weekend shift...

...still, several thousand people spent Christmas without windows to replace those that were shattered...

...Jospin, by contrast, tends to resort to indirect speech when discussing crime —"I am told that...

...One gendarme website is hosted by an American server that also has a far-Right French party among its clients...

...In the last week of November, roughly 30,000 policemen crowded the streets of different districts under their jurisdiction, and within a few days several thousand gendarmes followed suit...

...One opinion poll suggested that a staggering 90 per cent of the population backed the police and gendarme protests...

...Neo-Gaullist President Jacques Chirac, who plans to run again in the election scheduled to be held April 21, is also likely to hop on the security bandwagon...

...Then on September 21, in what seemed a terrifying echo of the U.S...

...By mid-December, promises of aid and handouts of various kinds totaled some $1.185 billion, or $708 million more than allowed for in the 2002 budget...

...All this went on against a background of growing violence...

...In the public sector, the new policy has highlighted the difficulties of what Le Monde described as "a state that is oversized and too poor...

...Alain Madelin, who fiercely disagrees with Chevènement on most other matters, agrees on security...

...The 6.7 million people on its payrolls absorb 45 per cent of the national expenditure...