A 15-year-old student has had their hand blown off after picking up a stun grenade being used by police as mass school protests continue across France, local authorities said.
The incident comes as nearly 500 schools are expected to be completely or partially closed following student protests across the country over dilapidated schools and classrooms, overcrowding and teacher shortages preceding a nationwide day of demonstrations on Tuesday.
Way to reverse the blame on the victims again. Protesters can’t control violent individuals. That’s why you deploy the police in a normal world.
But you seem to mean the protesters need to do the police’s job otherwise police will start crushing protests.
Be aware that
1.This would not be possible if the infiltrated policemen were not covered by both their hierarchy (actually they were most likely ordered to start a battle) and the anti-riot police. Anti-riot police know well how to go get an identified individual in a crowd. Were it a student, they would have done so, and not smoothly.
2. Over the last decade, we had countless of whistleblowers from the police force who were quitting over racism, sexism, gutted by the rise of the far right ideology in the police ranks. Pretend of being attacked is not to ease the decent policemen, it’s to keep pretending in medias and court. France police is deeply deeply rotted, and might well be beyond salvation.
Advice to mitigate issues isn’t the same as putting blame. I think you’re confusing pragmatism for moral opposition. Cops being bastards isn’t their victims’ fault, but that observation isn’t worth jack shit if they continue to be bastards.
When the police send provocateurs to help them crush protests, you can hardly rely on the police to also control the provocateurs. Of course nobody should have to do the cops’ job, and not everybody can realistically stop someone from starting shit, but on a practical level, isn’t it strictly better if somebody does something?
They won’t suffer consequences, of course, but that’s not my point. We both agree that it’s the fault of the system for being fucked up.
On the other hand, if they were prevented from doing their job (such as other protesters holding them back from trying to attack), what are the police gonna do? Arrest people for stopping violence? I’m sure that’s a great look.
It can be both, but either way, isn’t it strictly better to prevent them from being attacked and undermining that pretense? Because that’s what I’m on about: what can be done?
If you have a suggestion for how to deal with this problem, I’m all ears; that’s what these discussion spaces are great for.
I just don’t think “Shit’s fucked, but it’s not my fault” is a productive mindset. It’s not wrong, just not very useful for unfucking things.