France: Police Firearm Bill Sparks Wave of Protest

Paris (France) – Issam El Khalfaoui, the father of a teenager shot dead by police in Marseille in 2021, says his son's killing during a police traffic stop showed how hard it is to bring the truth to light. According to him, police and the justice system took various actions to conceal evidence, and this is a systemic problem.

"The police's National Inspectorate (IGPN) lost the video recording of my son's killing. Witnesses were never interviewed, and the case file vanished entirely from the court. That is the reality," El Khalfaoui said.

France is among the countries with the highest number of police killings in Western Europe. At least 69 people were killed by police or gendarmes in 2024, compared with 49 in 2023 and 50 in 2022.

This time, French police are again under scrutiny, as clashes during protests over education have raised concerns about how they operate. A 15-year-old boy lost a hand to a police stun grenade, while another officer threw a tear gas canister at close range, breaking a 14-year-old's jaw and knocking out several teeth. The use of stun grenades was subsequently suspended. Officials said 700 police officers were also injured.

The unrest comes as a controversial bill under which police would be presumed to have acted in self-defense when using their firearms awaits a Senate vote. The bill passed the lower house in July.

El Khalfaoui launched a petition against the bill that has gathered more than 700,000 signatures. Critics call the legislation a "license to kill."

Advocacy groups including Stop State Violence (SAVE), the Human Rights League (LDH) and Amnesty International, along with left-wing lawmakers, organized protests in Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse that drew nearly 50,000 people on September 20.

Under the bill, police officers and gendarmes would be presumed to have acted in self-defense if they use weapons in the line of duty, placing the burden of proof on complainants.

For El Khalfaoui, who co-founded SAVE after the death of his 19-year-old son, passing the bill would only increase police power. "In France, there has been a takeover of power by police unions. The police are being militarized to a degree unmatched anywhere in Europe, and resources are allocated to the police to secure the force's loyalty to the government," he said.

He also argued the bill could reinforce a sense of impunity, and that rebutting the presumption of self-defense would be impossible.

Meanwhile, Bruno Bartocetti, a regional representative of a police union, told BFMTV that the incident involving El Khalfaoui's son was an act of "self-defense beyond doubt," and said the teenager wanted to "pick a fight."

The judicial case was dropped in December 2021 but reopened after the family's lawyer filed a complaint over "obstruction of the search for the truth" after surveillance camera videos disappeared. A new judge was appointed in 2025 and the court's investigation is still ongoing.

'A bill that facilitates police impunity'

Nathalie Tehio, president of the French Human Rights League (LDH), also fears the bill "facilitates police impunity." "If there are no more investigations, that means police cannot be held accountable for anything," she said. "France leads Europe in the number of people killed by police."

According to researchers, a 2017 law allowing police to use their weapons when a vehicle fails to comply with a stop order led to a fivefold increase in fatal shootings. At the time, the law enjoyed broad political support, though some left-wing politicians opposed the new bill and joined protests.

Sebastien Roche, a researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) specializing in policing and democracy, told Al Jazeera that all parliamentary groups voted for the 2017 law by a very large majority, with cross-spectrum support from the left, the right and the far right.

After the 2024 legislative elections, President Emmanuel Macron's party could not secure an absolute majority to pass laws without allying with other parties. According to Roche, successive governments under Macron, especially in his second term, have taken up ideas from the far right.

With France's presidential election six months away, political parties are competing for voters. Roche said the race has begun, and in it the right is trying to win over far-right voters after losing much political strength to the far right in national and European elections.

In 2023, when a police officer shot dead Nahel Merzouk, a 17-year-old of Algerian descent, riots spread across France.

According to Roche, discrimination leads to more traffic stops and ultimately puts people of color at higher risk of violence. He cited his own research in Bouches-du-Rhone, in the Marseille region, showing that non-white people are more than 50 percent more likely to be stopped by police.

In 2001, Omer Mas Capitolin was in a work meeting when a commotion from a police operation outside shook the building. He went downstairs to ask officers to move, but police entered the meeting and handcuffed him. "They used a chokehold and pinned me to the ground. I couldn't breathe or speak," Mas Capitolin recalled.

He later founded the Community House for Development Support (MCDS), a grassroots nonprofit that fights police violence and discrimination. In 2021, six NGOs including MCDS filed a class-action suit against the French government, alleging systemic racial discrimination in police identity checks.

"We can call these identity checks discrimination, along with everything that comes with it, including refusal to comply, contempt of authority, resistance, and increasingly illegal and excessive fines against young people," Mas Capitolin said.

In October 2023, France's top court recognized racial profiling in police identity checks, a ruling Human Rights Watch (HRW) described as "historic." However, according to HRW, the court did not order French authorities to take "the necessary measures to end this long-standing abusive practice" when it ruled in the case brought by the six groups.

Also in 2021, the French state was found to have committed "serious negligence" in an identity check of three high school students in Saint-Denis, north of Paris. Last year, the European Court of Human Rights condemned France over racial profiling in the case of Karim Touil.

Despite these rulings, Mas Capitolin said "everything is moving in the opposite direction." "France is dealing with children using military-grade weapons. Police are over-equipped and over-armed. I am deeply pained," he said.