No Go Zones Spring Up In France

France is in real serious trouble, and the media is seriously underreporting the situation. Whereas they're quick to jump on the civil war in Iraq bandwagon, the situation in France is quite dire.

PARIS (Reuters) - Stoned, beaten and insulted, their vehicles torched by crowds of hostile youths, French police say they face an urban guerrilla war when they enter the run-down neighborhoods that ring the major cities.

“Our role is to guarantee the safety of people and property but the great difficulty today is that police are having problems ensuring their own safety,” said Jerome Hanarte of the Alliance-Police Nationale union.

Bedside television interviews with officers hospitalized after beatings in “les banlieues,” or suburbs, support statistics showing a 6.7 percent jump in violent crime in the 12 months to August. Fourteen officers are hurt every day in the line of duty, unions estimate, and law and order is sure to feature prominently in next year’s presidential election.

The head of the French crime statistics body told Reuters the rise in attacks on police was partly due to Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2002 decision to order police back into tough areas, to disrupt the black economy that fuels crime.

Some residents complain the move spawned constant police harassment which has only exacerbated tensions with local youths, many of whom come from ethnic minorities.

“You can see discrimination in ID controls,” complained Kader Latreche, 36, an Algerian with his own photo equipment repair shop in the La Courneuve suburb. “Why is it always people from the Maghreb or black people who are being stopped and checked? If it happens over and over again, it gets to you. People are frustrated, that’s obvious.”

I call BS on the claim that it was the Sarkozy's call for enforcement of law that has caused the rise in attacks. The French have only themselves to blame for ceding large parts of their country to thugs who do not adhere to French law. These thugs have seen that the French government is incapable of cracking down on the violence, so they've increased the intensity and geographical reach of the violence. From a dozen cars torched a night a few years back to 40 per night last year, we're now over 100 torched per night this year. French law enforcement officials are fearful of being put into situations that have grown beyond their control because the government has chosen to take it easy on the thugs who are behind the violence. 751 no-go areas have been identified by French law enforcement officials.

Why are they no-go areas? Because if the officials send in the police, riots are sure to follow. So, the local thugs in charge control those areas. Imagine if the Bloods and Crips controlled neighborhood after neighborhood in Los Angeles and the LAPD would not enter for fear of a riot starting. Or maybe think back to the movie Robocop where the cops were outmanned and outgunned by thugs and gangs who all but ran Detroit into the ground in a bleak vision of the future.

UPDATE:
Here's a direct link to the no-go zones in France. It's madness really that the French have surrendered their monopoly to use force to sustain law and order to thugs all in order to placate the same.