Last weekend in Nantes, western France, some 1,700 protesters gathered to march against police brutality, reports Politico.
They were met with clouds of tear gas.
It's a common sight these days at protests across France, where law enforcement relies heavily on tear gas, grenades and rubber bullets fired by controversial launchers known as lanceurs de balles de défense, or LBDs, for crowd control.
The anti-establishment Yellow Jackets movement, which has led mass demonstrations against Emmanuel Macron’s reform efforts across the country since November, has been the most vocal critic of the authorities’ heavy-handed approach. Several dozen people have lost an eye or a hand as a result of police interventions.
Now, with the death of Steve Maia Caniço, a 24-year-old who drowned in the Loire River near his hometown of Nantes after a confrontation with police at a music festival, public anger at the police is spreading beyond the movement’s ranks.
Caniço disappeared on the night of June 21, after authorities used tear gas to disperse concert-goers whom the prefect of Nantes later claimed were “unmanageable” and had “probably taken drugs.” In the chaos, more than a dozen people fell into the river and were rescued. Caniço, who couldn’t swim, was not.
His name quickly became a battle cry across the country for critics of the French police’s methods.