The French slogan "police partout,
justice nulle part" means "police everywhere,
justice nowhere" and is part of a
quote from
Victor Hugo delivered in April 1851 to the National Assembly. This slogan is now widely used during demonstrations or
protest movements against the police. This phrase, more than a hundred years old, is still used today, in
France and in other Western countries, in particular by groups or movements generally linked to the far left who
fight against
police brutality.
The Compagnies républicaines de sécurité (Republican Security Companies), abbreviated
CRS, are the general reserve of the French National Police. They are primarily involved in general security missions but the task for which they are best known is crowd and
riot control in
France.
Political
repression is the act of a state entity controlling a citizenry by force for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing the citizenry's ability to take part in the political life of a
society, thereby reducing their standing among their fellow citizens. It is often manifested through policies such as
human rights violations, surveillance abuse,
police brutality, imprisonment, involuntary settlement, stripping of citizen's rights, lustration and violent action or terror such as the murder, summary executions, torture, forced disappearance and other extrajudicial punishment of political activists, dissidents, or general population. Political
… Read more repression is often accompanied by violence, which might be legal or illegal according to domestic law. Violence can both eliminate political opposition directly by killing opposition members, or indirectly by instilling
fear.
Political
conflict strongly increases the likelihood of state
repression. Civil uprisings are a strong predictor of repressive activity as states so often engage in repressive behaviors in times of civil
conflict. When their authority or legitimacy is threatened, regimes respond by overtly or covertly suppressing dissidents to eliminate the behavioral threat.
Repression suppresses dissident mobilization by reducing the capacity of challengers to
organize, yet it is also feasible that challengers can leverage state repressive behavior to spur mobilization among sympathizers by framing
repression as a new grievance against the state.
Police brutality is the excessive and unwarranted use of force by law enforcement. It is an extreme form of police misconduct or violence and is a civil rights violation. It also refers to a situation where officers exercise undue or excessive force against a person.
Police violence includes but is not limited to physical or verbal harassment, physical or mental injury, property damage, the inaction of police officers, and in some cases, death. In the
United States, qualified immunity is a legal doctrine used to protect officers from litigation after incidents of
police violence. This law was issued by the Supreme Court in 1982. In recent years, particularly since the fatal shooting
… Read more of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014,
police brutality has become a hot-button issue in the
United States. Police officers in America are killing around 1,000 people every single year.
The
Black Lives Matter Movement, formed in 2013, has been a vocal part of the movement against
police brutality in the U.S. by organizing ?die-ins?, marches, and demonstrations in response to the killings of black men and women by police.
While
Black Lives Matter has become a controversial movement within the U.S., it has brought more attention to the number and frequency of police shootings of civilians.