“No justice, no peace,” chanted Parisian demonstrators gathered to protest against police violence and systemic racism on Saturday. Some incidents broke out during the demonstration, noted an AFP journalist.
Shortly after the start of this demonstration bringing together several thousand people, a pre-procession of hundreds of individuals dressed in black and hooded was formed in front of the organizations and collectives who had called for mobilization.
A degraded bank branch
Arriving at the Anvers metro station, in the north of the capital, they damaged a Caisse d’Epargne bank branch, which had its windows covered with stars, noted the AFP journalist. They then threw projectiles at a police car stuck in traffic on Boulevard de Clichy. The car was attacked “with an iron bar,” said the Paris police headquarters. One of the police officers then briefly got out of the vehicle with his gun in his hand to keep the demonstrators at bay, according to several videos posted on social networks, confirmed by a police source.
An “intervention by the BRAV”, named after this controversial unit of police officers on motorcycles, “made it possible to stop the action and shelter” the police officers present in the vehicle, added the police headquarters, which did not reported no arrests at this stage. “I strongly condemn these attacks and provide my support to the attacked and injured police officers,” police prefect Laurent Nuñez reacted on X (ex-Twitter).
According to the organizers, dozens of organizations, parties and unions, mainly from the radical left, 15,000 people participated in the Paris demonstration. Law enforcement has not yet released its own estimate.