French Police Research Articles

Becoming a Rescuer in the Pyrenees: Border Guides Who took Jews from France to Franco’s Spain (1940–1943)

Abstract During the Holocaust, thousands of Jews in France fled Europe via Franco’s Spain. When leaving France, refugees who lacked the required travel documents avoided police and customs officers at the Franco-Spanish border by walking over the Pyrenees. Guides (passeurs) led them through the mountains to the border, choosing trails and times that would make encounters with police patrols less likely. Most charged large sums of money, but some worked without payment. This article explores why the latter group engaged in this dangerous form of rescue, by examining how they became border guides. It focuses on two French farmers, a French Christian brother at a sanatorium, and an antifascist activist from Germany. The sources analyzed include the memoirs, unpublished accounts, diaries, letters and oral history interviews of the guides, their work associates, and the refugees; as well as official correspondence between French police and government officials in the Pyrenees region, and the archival records of the Brothers of the Christian Schools. The author’s primary research finding is that the border guides considered in this study undertook the dangerous task of guiding refugees because they had had a series of experiences and had engaged in a series of actions that made it more feasible for them to do so when asked. Their values and understanding of their work also help explain why they became guides. Reflections on the implications of this research for our comprehension of bystanders’ actions conclude the article.

Europe’s spectacular borderlines: on refugee camps, banlieues and other spaces of exception

ABSTRACT Mourning the murder of Nahel Merzouk by the French police and the drowning of 750 human beings by the Greek coastguard’s recklessness, we argue that the erosion of human rights at the EU’s external borders is being co-constituted by an analogous erosion within its internal borders. To establish this connection, we re-conceptualise the EUropean b/ordering regime as a network of fractal borderscapes characterised by a selective criminalisation of mobility that reproduces longstanding racist prejudice along socio-spatial borderlines. We argue that the proliferation of these spaces of exception is degenerating into a state of exception: a polity’s self-destructive tendency to replace the rule of law for legalised despotism. Such autoimmune reaction, we claim, is rooted in borderism: a spectacle that misshapes geography into spurious antagonisms epitomised by national and civilisational dichotomies (“friends” and “foes”), thus creating a hyperreality that breeds racism, spatialises apartheid and exacerbates animosity.

“LA HAINE”: CINEMATIC INSIGHTS INTO PERIPHERY INEQUITY AND FRENCH NATIONAL IDENTITY

The multicultural suburban areas, known as banlieues, surrounding French cities are marked by social inequalities, systemic discrimination, crime, and violence. Mathieu Kassovitz’s film “La Haine” (1995) is set in one such Paris suburb, capturing the daily lives of a group of multi-ethnic friends amidst escalating tensions between the French police and immigrant residents. The film “La Haine”, which received critical acclaim and won the César Award in 1996, serves as a powerful portrayal of life in the banlieues, capturing the essence of marginal inequality. By focusing on the contrasting experiences of suburban youth and the disparities between Paris and its outskirts, the film highlights societal issues that remain relevant even two decades later. This study uses “La Haine” as a lens to explore whether the challenges depicted in the film persist in contemporary society, demonstrating the enduring impact of marginal inequality. Through this analysis, the film emerges as a significant cultural artifact that challenges national identities in France.

Mediated public perceptions of police encampment clearances in Canada and France: a cross-national study

ABSTRACT This qualitative study investigates public perceptions of police encampment clearances in Canada and France. Our focus is on how YouTube users in these two countries judge police conduct in response to videos of police clearing encampments. Research on police public perceptions and police legitimacy typically focuses on public views of the police institution and perceptions stemming from direct interactions with officers. An analysis of YouTube comments on police intervention videos offers important insights into a relatively unexplored intermediate case: the mediated judgements on concrete, specific police action from individuals outside of the perceived police intervention. Further, the scholarship specifically examining social media and public perceptions of policing in cross-national contexts is almost nonexistent. To address these gaps, we ask the following: What do comments on YouTube in response to videos of police encampment clearances reveal about police legitimacy in Canada and France as perceived by social media users? A total of 8,091 user-generated comments across 25 Canadian YouTube videos and 7,086 comments across 29 French YouTube videos were collected, sorted, and examined using qualitative media analysis. Our analysis confirms that the issue of police legitimacy generates dissensus and polarisation. It demonstrates that public perceptions of the legitimacy of the police clearance are strongly tied to the legitimacy of the encampment itself, and more broadly to moral judgements about the groups targeted by the police. Our findings also reveal that French police are more often perceived as violent than their Canadian counterparts.

Promoting ethical voice in the police: a daily Examination of ethical vision, LMX ambivalence, and interpersonal justice

ABSTRACT Drawing on signalling theory, this study explores the daily cues provided by leaders to promote ethical voice, specifically examining the impact of ethical vision communication as the primary cue. We also investigate the moderating effect of LMX ambivalence as a secondary cue, and how this effect can be diminished by daily interpersonal justice. Our seven-day daily diary study, which involved 68 French police officers, tested this model. The findings indicate that ethical voice is dynamically impacted by ethical vision communication, LMX Ambivalence and interpersonal justice. Finally, we discuss practical implications and provide guidelines to train public leaders.

Rural Revolt: The Scale Problem in Houellebecq and Norris

Abstract: This article discusses the implications of farmers' insurrections suppressed by state power in Michel Houellebecq's Sérotonine (2019) and Frank Norris's The Octopus (1901). In both cases, the disparity in scale between the farmers' organization and the larger forces set against them (the European Union and the French police, for Houellebecq; the railroad trust and U.S. marshals, for Norris) not only dictates the narrative outcome but also animates a set of questions around globalization, masculinity, the sociological meaning of place, and the relationship between the natural and mechanized worlds. Both novels' conclusions can be read as a surrender to scale, although the two authors' perspectives treat that surrender with ostensibly opposed reactions.

Window of detection of cocaine related alkaloids in oral fluid collected with the FloqSwab™ after coca tea consumption.

Coca tea is a popular drink in some countries of South America where it is presented as a safe energy preparation, based on a limited total content of cocaine of about 3 to 5 mg. Tea bags can be bought with no legal considerations in these countries both by locals and tourists but its consumption can have consequences when consumed overseas. Driving under the influence of cocaine is banned in most places in the world and can be documented by oral fluid testing. A study was implemented with coca tea bags (Coca & Muna) purchased in Peru, after a French attorney at law contacted the laboratory to assess the involvement of coca tea in the positive oral fluid results of a driver. Ten healthy volunteers consumed 250 mL of coca tea containing 4.5 mg of cocaine. No volunteer reported any change in behavioral effects after consumption of the coca tea. Oral fluid was collected with a swab (FloqSwab™, Copan) over 8 hours to follow the elimination of cocaine and its major metabolites (benzoylecgonine and ecgonine methylester). This is the procedure used by the French police. All samples were analyzed by UHPLC-MS-MS after Quantisal™ buffer desorption. As the device does not allow measurement of the amount of collected fluid, the results are qualitative. This is in accordance with the French law that requires a yes or no response about the presence of cocaine, with a minimum required performance level of 10 ng/ml of cocaine or benzoylecgonine. Parent cocaine was identified for 30 to 120 min. Benzoylecgonine and ecgonine methylester were identified between 1 and 8 hours, with a large inter-individual variation. Although it is generally accepted that a 4 to 5 mg cocaine dose has no significant pharmacological effect, the consumption of coca tea can lead to the suspension of a person's driving license due to a positive oral fluid test.

The dépôt of the Police Prefecture of Paris During the Occupation: French Collaboration in the Nazi Genocidal Policy

The dépôt of the Police Prefecture of Paris, in the heart of the city, was one of the most important places of anti-Jewish repression in France during the Occupation. It was the hub for the deportation of almost a third of the 38,500 deportees domiciled in Paris who were not arrested by the French police during the round-ups, but even more Jews passed through the dépôt without eventually being deported. These arrests were mostly based on the justification of offences committed by Jews against French laws and German orders. From mid-1942, the dépôt gradually evolved from a platform for sorting those arrested with a view to bringing them before a French judge to the main concentration and transfer point for Jews arrested individually to the Drancy internment camp. Yet, despite its importance, the dépôt remains completely unknown. The aim of this article is to present the central role played by the dépôt in the daily anti-Jewish repression that sealed French collaboration with Nazi genocidal policies until the Liberation.

Russian, American and French police officers professional vocabulary features: speech culture ethic

The article deals with the professional vocabulary of American, French and Russian police officers from the ethical side of professional communication, i.e. socially oriented and nationally determined rules of speech behavior, including set expressions accepted in a professional society and used in situations of “polite” contact with an interlocutor. Etiquette greeting formulas, communication with partners, boss and colleagues from an informal point of view are compared. Similar features in the use of jargon, slang and professionalism in the speech of police officers in French, English and Russian are analyzed. Examples of dialogues, statements are taken from dictionaries, police speech researches and studies, live speech, as well as modern films that currently show the life and work of the police in the most realistic and close to life. The specify of police work contributes to rudeness, obscene vocabulary, sarcasm and self-irony, a large amount of professional jargon in speech, which makes the speech of a policeman bright, emotionally and expressively colored.

Managing my shame: Investigating the effects of organizational identity threat and public service motivation on exemplification

AbstractHow do public employees respond to organizational identity threats? The present study investigates how public employees make sense of and react to threatening events that may call into question organization's core attributes and status. Using social identity theory and the appraisal theory of emotions, we develop a model in which organizational identity induced by negative media coverage threat provokes shame that results in exemplification. We further explain the role of public service motivation as a moderator of the proposed mediated relationships. Predictions are tested in an experimental study and a field study involving French police officers. Our results show that shame mediated the positive effect of organizational identity threat on police officers' exemplification behaviors. When public service motivation is high, police officers are more likely to engage in exemplification to cope with organizational identity threat than when it is slow. Theoretical and practical implications and future research directions are discussed.

Stop and account process

Over time, we notice that the measure of identification of persons has undergone small changes, and the refusal of identification has become a problem among police officers performing their duties. Thus, the laws were created to ensure public order and the safety of citizens, and then to sanction violators. In the theme, we took into account what various authors have published in the books written by them, regarding the identification of people and all the activities that a policeman has the obligation to perform, as well as the laws by which the French police carry out their activity. The purpose of stop and account a person is to procure a set of rules for establishing a person's identity and carrying out the tasks regarding the preparation and approval of the documents related to this procedure. Romanian and foreign citizens have the obligation to legitimize themselves on the territory of Romania either with an identity document, or verbally if they do not have any document on them, whenever they are asked to do so by the officers and agents of the Romanian Police, as well as on the territory of France.

Fragmentary, Censored, Indispensable

Abstract While the massacre of peaceful Algerian demonstrators by French police on October 17, 1961, has been thoroughly studied by historians and is well known to the general public thanks to a sprawling corpus of novels, plays, songs, films, bandes dessinées, and other retrospective representations, to date there has been no careful archaeology of the event's original audiovisual archive from 1961. This article takes up that challenge in two stages: first, by identifying the photos and newsreel footage shot on the night of October 17, specifying the circumstances of their production, (non)distribution, and impact in the immediate aftermath of the massacre; second, by surveying how key elements of the original archive were recycled over the following sixty years to serve in turn as surrogates for and complements to other sources of knowledge about this infamous and long-dissimulated crime d’état.

The Revue International Anarchiste's World Survey (1924–1925)

The Revue International Anarchiste's World Survey (1924–1925)

Résurgence de l’Histoire dans la fiction: les massacres du by Michel Laronde

Reviewed by: Résurgence de l’Histoire dans la fiction: les massacres du by Michel Laronde Jennifer Howell Laronde, Michel. Résurgence de l’Histoire dans la fiction: les massacres du 17 octobre 1961 à Paris. L’Harmattan, 2021. ISBN 978-2-343-23538-7. Pp. 226. On 17 Oct. 1961, the French Federation of Algeria’s Front de libération nationale (FLN) led a peaceful demonstration against a curfew that unfairly targeted Algerian Muslims living in the French capital. Thousands of people, including women and children, participated in the march. Under orders from Prefect Maurice Papon, the French police and the Compagnies républicaines de sécurité attempted to block access to the city by securing subway and train stations and raiding public buses. Many protestors were brutally attacked, their bodies thrown into the Seine. The next day, official sources reported three deaths and sixty-four wounded. Yet, according to the FLN, journalists, and eyewitnesses, the death toll was considerably higher. Despite government attempts to efface the event from national history, it would later resurface in fiction beginning in 1982 with Georges Mattei’s La guerre des gusses. These works are the focus of Laronde’s study that comparatively analyzes twenty-four novels published between 1982 and 2012, and in which the massacres appear (Laronde ends his study in 2012, the year François Hollande became the first French president to publicly acknowledge [End Page 197] the massacres). The resurgence of 17 Oct. 1961 in French national history, Laronde argues, stems from the progressive development of a corrective discourse of the event in (historical) fiction. Inspired by historical omission, these works reveal the role that literature can play in the processes of individual, collective, and institu- tional remembrance. Through a sustained reading of novels that fit within narrow spatiotemporal and thematic parameters, Laronde’s analysis is perhaps best de- scribed as a case study of the relationship between postcolonial fiction and the workings of memory and postmemory. Similar to Marianne Hirsch’s model of remembrance in second-generation Holocaust literature (explained in the introduc- tion), Laronde understands the repetition of fictional references to the day of the massacre as the product of historical trauma. However, references vary significantly in narrative form and function. These differences—each defined according to one of three ekphrastic paradigms presented in chapter one—form the basis of chapters three and four. The author’s methodology is the subject of chapter two. Interestingly, Laronde notes in the conclusion that his study did not confirm his initial hypothesis. His chronological reading of novels by year of publication failed to reveal the emergence, development, and successful realization of a new literary discourse on 17 Oct. 1961. Rather than finding evidence of a corrective discourse evolving over time, Laronde discovered that reactions to the event’s erasure from national history depend on author identity. His analysis suggests that Franco-Maghrebi writers seek to reintegrate this forgotten chapter of French history so that personal, familial, and communal memory are no longer excluded from the national memory. In contrast, the writing of a corrective discourse by Franco-French authors establishes that “mainstream” cultural production has nevertheless evolved toward a more inclusive national discourse on colonial history, one that is decidedly postcolonial. Published nearly sixty years after the event, Laronde’s work is timely and contributes to our understanding of the processes of remembrance and historicization. Jennifer Howell Illinois State University Copyright © 2022 American Association of Teachers of French ...

The May 1967 massacre in Guadeloupe

On 26 May 1967, French police opened fire on striking workers in Pointeà-Pitre, Guadeloupe, sparking a major uprising across the city. According to officials at the time, eight Guadeloupeans were killed during the unrest and many more were injured. However, a state cover-up means we may never know the true death toll. The French government blamed the violence on a clandestine independence movement (GONG) and tried nineteen activists before the French court of state security for threatening the territorial integrity of the French Republic. Fifty years later, the massacre has received little acknowledgement outside Guadeloupe. This paper will argue that a clearer understanding of the May 1967 massacre and its legacy demonstrates that Guadeloupe is not an anomaly, disconnected from twentieth-century decolonization. Instead, this event highlights the failures of nationalist movements in Guadeloupe and draws links to other struggles for self-determination in the Caribbean and Algeria, situating Guadeloupe within the wider narrative of global decolonization.

Steinlen, the Police, and the (In)Justice System in Fin-de-Siècle France

Abstract In writing about the police force in late 19th-century France, the anarchist Jean Grave decried that it was in fact necessary, if only to uphold the decisions of the unjust magistracy and to protect the interests of the bourgeoisie. This essay explores his claim through the graphic work of the Franco-Swiss artist Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen, a member of Grave's intellectual circle. Steinlen collaborated with radical leftist performers, authors, and publishers, including Grave, to produce a wealth of images that reveal his keen sensitivity to the social and political inequities of his time. Notably, Steinlen's emigration to Paris in 1881 coincided with a period of marked class antagonism in the capital, largely exacerbated by the policies of the state and their most visible enforcers: the police. Steinlen's incisive illustrations combat the uneven treatment of the lower classes by French police officers and the justice system at large, highlighting the oppressive and relentless nature of the judicial machine infernale while offering possibilities for its disruption or subversion.

The Argentella scandal: why French officials did not make Corsica a nuclear test site in 1960

ABSTRACT Top French officials made plans in early 1960 to transform an abandoned silver mine in Corsica, called the Argentella Massif, into an underground site for nuclear explosions. By June 1960, they had canceled these plans. This article shows how a mass movement on the Mediterranean island forced their hand, and it explains why Corsicans of diverse political affiliations took to the streets. The Argentella project—and the health, environmental, and strategic risks that it entailed—looked in Corsica like evidence that Paris saw the islanders as second-class citizens, even residents of an internal colony. French police intelligence, which maintained surveillance on the Corsican anti-nuclear movement, feared that this movement might have drawn inspiration from the contemporaneous struggle for national liberation in Algeria, where French nuclear explosions began. The Argentella protests illustrated national disagreements about French nuclear ambitions that previous scholarship, proposing official consensus, has minimized. They show how, in a nuclear-armed democracy, local officials, political activists, and ordinary citizens can shape nuclear-weapons policy. But Corsican anti-nuclear action in 1960 did not demand disarmament. These protests also illuminate a longer trajectory in French nuclear history, which involved atmospheric explosions in colonized territories in Algeria and Polynesia until the 1970s, despite local and international resistance.

Police prehospital trauma care and hemorrhage control training as an indicator for elevated performance: A systematic review of literature

The global escalation of terrorist and felonious assaults in the civilian environment along with the Emergency Medical Services lack of training in tactical emergency casualty care lead the police forces to look for new training strategies regarding penetrating trauma management from Law Enforcement Personnel. USA police agencies approached the military committee for guidelines due to similarities presented between civilian incidents and warfare. Therefore, modified Tactical Emergency Casualty Care programs were developed. These programs were also adapted by the Hellenic Police Force, along with German, Italian, French and British Police. The aim was to elevate Law Enforcement Officers medical knowledge and practical skills in bleeding control, tension pneumothorax and airway management using hemostatic dressings, tourniquets, decompression needles and nasopharyngeal tubes respectively, in an ongoing situation. It is evident that LEOs training nowadays is more demanding as far as it concerns severe and life-threatening injury management, resulting to increased self-confidence and medical skill development. On the other hand, such training should be accessible and cost-efficient to the majority of field-operating personnel.

How institutional contexts shape police-adolescent encounters. A study of France and Germany

ABSTRACT In a French-German study including a large survey of adolescents in four cities, we analyze the interaction patterns during stops. Based on the respondents’ reports of their last experience of a police stop/encounter, we look at the likelihood that they assessed the interaction as respectful or disrespectful, conflictual or even violent, and how either the police officers’ or their own behaviour contributed to this outcome. The comparative design of the survey allows us to examine differences in the institutional patterns of use of force during stops of adolescents by the French and German police (where, when, against which groups). Using multilevel regression analyses, we compare the individual and spatial predictors of disrespectful or violent interactions, in particular with regard to ethnicity and urban segregation in the two countries. While discrimination in the selection of targets is found in France, it is not in Germany. In addition, interactions are much more frequently reported as disrespectful and violent by French compared to German adolescents. These results align with previous research showing that France has a more confrontational policing pattern of work, with more stops, more racial profiling and more tensions during stops. We contend that an institutional theory of policing (ITP) is needed to account for the repeatedly found differences in how much force is used and how it relates to the use of stops and their modalities across the two states. We propose that ITP is made of the ‘pillars of institutional order’ as a theoretical framework for explaining those differences in police practices.

Looking for Diouana Gomis (1927–58): The Story behind African Cinema’s Most Iconic Suicide

Nearly all analyses of Ousmane Sembène’s novella La Noire de… (Voltaïque, 1962) and its eponymous film adaptation (1966) mention the fact that Sembène found inspiration for his text and film in a French newspaper report of a real suicide. However, scholars have not tracked down a copy of the original report or excavated the history of Diouana Gomis, the real woman whose suicide in 1958—on the heels of the 1958 Referendum and on the eve of Senegalese independence (1960)—served as the inspiration for one of the most iconic of African films. Indeed, the figure of Diouana has become synonymous with Sembène’s literary and cinematic character, in particular her “screen memory” as Senegalese actress’s Mbissine Thérèse Diop’s powerful performance in the film. Until now, traces of the “real” Diouana have remained buried in French police archives, her story receding from view. My essay makes a significant contribution to the study of Sembène’s art and to the memory of Diouana Gomis by reconstructing the backstory of her suicide through unstudied archival documents. Diouana Gomis (1927–58), a thirty-one-year-old, unmarried woman from Boutoupa in the Ziguinchor region of Senegal arrived in Antibes during the second week of April in 1958 and died by suicide less than three months later. The faint archival traces sewn in the wake of her suicide make it possible, and necessary, to reconstruct some of the details of her life and death so that the ghostly signature of this real woman might shadow the “Diouana” whom we see and hear on screen.