In France, minority communities decry a surge in police fines
“There is systemic discrimination,” said Alice Achache, a lawyer representing some Paris residents who are challenging fines.
The heavy concentration of fines in parts of the town where immigrants live fits a pattern that has played out across France, according to the Reuters review. Police issued 58 COVID-related fines per 1,000 population in the five Paris districts with the highest concentration of residents with non-European backgrounds, based on France Strategie’s figures. That is about 40% higher than the rate of other areas, where police issued almost 42 fines per 1,000 people.
Proving bias in fining practices is difficult, some scholars say. Other factors that could explain the geographical disparity in fine rates, sociologists said, include greater concentration of police patrols or higher crime rates in certain areas. The proposed expansion of fines is aimed at providing “efficiency and simplicity,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told the upper house of parliament in October. During another debate in the lower house in November, Darmanin denied racial profiling by police in issuing fines.
Assam lives in this newer part of town in an area known as ‘Les Cineastes,’ a series of modern apartment blocks served by a cafe and a few shops. It was in this and an adjacent neighborhood where police issued the vast majority of fines over the more than two-year period Reuters reviewed. Hassan Bouchouf received fines on more than two dozen occasions, according to the town’s fine data. The 37-year-old factory worker told Reuters the police would either tell him to move on or fine him whenever they would see him and his friends socializing outside, even when they had moved to the nearby woods.Bouchouf owes the treasury more than 20,000 euros for fines received between 2017 and 2020, according to a treasury summary dated Aug. 9.
Damien Allouch, the town’s center-left mayor elected in June 2020, told Reuters that police continue to issue fines where necessary but said anti-social behavior can be addressed through other means. “Sometimes discussion is enough,” he said. Separately, Assam has contested the nine fines from his supermarket trip, plus four others from April and May 2020, on various grounds, including that he wasn’t stopped by officers in all cases and that police reports contained insufficient detail, Gandin said. In late November, a police tribunal canceled two of the fines, both COVID-19 related, according to Gandin. He continues to challenge the other 11 fines, which include several related to the quad bike he drove on his supermarket trip.
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