Amnesty International Urges France to Address Systemic Racism in Policing After Teen’s Death

Nahel, aged 17, was shot dead by a police officer following a refusal to comply, recalls Amnesty International in a press release, specifying that the young man is at least the fifteenth victim of police violence during a traffic stop since the beginning of 2022 and that most of them are "racialized" people.

The international organization called on the French authorities to put an end to their "dangerous denial regarding the effects of systemic racism in law enforcement" in France, denouncing the fact that "the illegal use of firearms in the context of traffic stops" is "associated with a racist prejudice".

"The authorities prefer to reduce racism to isolated incidents, rather than questioning the widespread discriminatory practices suffered by racialized people," criticizes Amnesty International, deploring the statement by the prefect of police Laurent Nunez who claimed that "there is no racism in the police".

Amnesty International also insisted on the "need to rebuild the rules on the use of firearms by the French police", adding that "Nahel’s homicide is a tragic example of the flaws in the broad wording of Article L.435-1 [2]: the publicly available video of this homicide shows that the advance of the vehicle did not constitute a threat to the police officers since they were on the side of the vehicle, and not in front of it".