“Understand, evaluate, react”
… President LR of the Senate Law Commission, François-Noël Buffet, worked on
“the riots of June 2023”
. After 80 hearings, several field visits and a consultation launched with the municipalities affected by these events, he issued, on April 10, a detailed report which is worth both the analysis of what may have happened during this week of chaos and by the firm solutions he recommends to avoid new outbreaks of violence. The elected official affirms it without hesitation:
“There is nothing to confirm that they will not recur in the near future”
.
From the outset, he delivers the latest update of the results of this spectacular sequence in the summer of 2023, following the death of Nahel Merzouk in Nanterre, during a highly criticized police intervention:
“two deaths directly linked to the riots , one in Cayenne, the other in Marseille"
, but also
"more than a thousand people injured, including minors"
, in particular
"782 law enforcement officers - 674 police officers and 108 gendarmes -, and 3 firefighters
. Finally,
“at least forty seriously injured people were listed among the rioters or the general population”
.
One billion euros in damage
The senatorial mission writes:
“the estimate of the damage reaches the figure, colossal and up significantly compared to 2005, of one billion euros”
. In addition,
“the 16,400 claims declared to insurers represent a cost of 793 million euros, an amount four times higher than that of the 2005 riots”
. Reimbursements from insurers are far from all being made.
The material toll, it is true, is considerable:
“among the 2,508 buildings burned or damaged include 273 law enforcement buildings, 105 town halls and 273 schools”
. Without forgetting, moreover,
“numerous police or gendarmerie vehicles”
, among the
“12,031 vehicles burned”
.
On the trade side, the mission estimates, as a
“low estimate”
, those having been the subject of abuses at
“more than a thousand”
. According to her,
“probably 1,500 of them were vandalized or looted, in particular 436 tobacco shops, 370 bank branches, approximately 200 food shops, 200 clothing shops and even 118 opticians”
.
François-Noël Buffet relays, in his report, the typical portrait of the rioter of 2023, drawn up by a general inspector of Justice during the hearings:
“a man, of French nationality, aged 23 on average, single, without children, often hosted by their parents, having a secondary level diploma, maximum baccalaureate, mostly in work. More precisely, 91% of the authors are men, 71% are of French nationality. »
A third of minors
According to the Ministry of the Interior,
“a third of the 3,500 people arrested on July 4, 2023 are minors, the overall average age being between 17 and 18 years old”
. But the Buffet report provides additional elements that are not devoid of interest: For example,
"if, from a family and socio-economic point of view, the rioters find themselves in situations that are generally more fragile and disadvantaged than the average, the observation of social marginality seems to need to be nuanced. In fact, almost three quarters of the minors referred are enrolled in a higher education establishment
. In his eyes, clearly, the
“excuse”
of marginality and social exclusion to justify the excesses does not work.
Another useful clarification in this report: even if it could be explained at the start that most of the rioters were first-time offenders, around 60%,
"there remains a submerged part of the iceberg, which escapes detection." "all the actors and which seems to be made up more of people involved in habitual delinquency courses"
, estimates François-Noël Buffet.
The president of the Senate Law Commission recalls that
“only those individuals who were apprehended by the internal security forces and tried in the first weeks following the riots were taken into consideration in these initial analyses”
. In other words: the analysis carried out just after the event focuses mainly on those who were unable to escape arrest. Those who ran the slowest?
Establish a profile of the rioters
The senator, in any case, is not afraid to write it:
“Therefore, youth and the over-representation of first-time offenders among those convicted could – at least partially – be put into perspective as the investigations concerning the facts the most serious ones will succeed
. ”
And the elected official warned:
“In this context, and more than nine months after the end of the events, the mission therefore calls on the government to better exploit the data at its disposal in order to produce a real analysis of the profile of the rioters, an essential approach to understanding the dynamics that were at work in the summer of 2023. »
Beware of hasty analyzes within the executive, in short.
There remains the question of the remedy. For the Buffet mission, he goes through 25 very concrete proposals. First, since
“no preparation in advance of a coordinated and national police response specific to the riot context had been established”
with the events of last year, it is essential to
“modernize”
the means of recovery and of maintaining order.
This involves the construction of a dedicated
“national plan”
and a new employment doctrine which allows the
“decompartmentalization and rezoning”
of the employment of security forces; better training in shooting and use of weapons in a riot context; more stocks of ammunition and therefore a renovation of their production line, to avoid shortages in the midst of a crisis; more body-worn cameras to secure operations and provide means of proof; without neglecting the increased use of drones and video surveillance.
“Coded marking materials”
Another recommendation: better protect armories and law enforcement buildings. And then
“experiment with the equipment and use of
coded marking materials
in the event of riots”
, in short, the sprinkling of products which identify the presence of a person in a place and at a given time, by means of 'a water cannon, for example. A solution already mentioned under Castaner in 2019, during the
“Yellow Vests”
.
The range of solutions envisaged against the riots is wide: restricting access to fireworks mortars, including at the European level; better control the social networks that rioters use to organize themselves, even if it means blocking certain functionalities during crises, under certain conditions. The Senate opens doors. The government, for its part, is moving forward. In particular through open consultations, in recent days, by Gérald Darmanin, to better involve municipal police in the security response.