For around two weeks, locals in the troubled no-go neighbourhoods in the department of Yvelines have attacked police officers nearly every single evening.
The Yvelines department, which lies just outside of the French capital, saw multiple attacks against police over the weekend, including several incidents from Friday night to Saturday morning.
The first incident took place at approximately 6:50 pm on Friday when a gang of 15 locals threw projectiles at a police patrol in the Mureaux commune. Residents threw a paving stone that struck a police vehicle, and officers were forced to respond with four crowd control smoke grenades, Le Parisien reports.
At 10 pm in Mantes-la-Jolie, 30 young people attacked officers with stones, with police again deploying grenades to escape their assault. A short time later, police were ambushed along the rue du Docteur-Broussay and chased down with motorcycles. A group of 80 people then rioted.
Sunday night saw even more attacks in Les Mureaux, Mantes-la-Jolie, and Sartrouville that saw officers once again targetted by youths armed with stones and other projectiles.
The last incident of the night, which occurred at 1:45 am on Monday, saw officers lured into an area in Sartrouville when local youths set fire to several garbage bins.
Ten people attacked officers upon their arrival with fireworks and police responded by firing two stun grenades at the group. A fire brigade was also called in to stop the spread of the garbage fires which threatened to set alight nearby buildings.
Since French President Emmanuel Macron enacted strict lockdown measures to stop the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus in mid-March, there have been multiple reports of attacks on police officers across France in troubled no-go areas.
Early into the lockdown, police in the notorious Seine-Saint-Denis department said they were overwhelmed trying to enforce the lockdown measures. At the same time, officers in northern Paris claim to give out at least 200 fines daily in the city’s heavily migrant-populated 18th arrondissement.
Violence may increase in the near future, according to a police investigator from the Ile-de-France region, which contains both Paris, Seine-Saint-Denis, and Yvelines. According to the investigator, a shortage of street drugs could fuel a surge in violence.