THE VIOLENCE IN PARIS: WHO ARE THE NEW RIOTERS? | M6 | Enquête Exclusive

Images of the December 1^st Yellow Vest Paris demonstration that degenerated into violence created a shock wave. The police and CRS (riot police) were overwhelmed and without the resources to prevent the acts of vandalism. These rioters present a totally new, even surprising profile: far from the classic activists, often associated with the extreme right or left and hardened to shock tactics, the Yellow Vests are mostly ordinary men and women, often with families and without any previous problems or history with the law. Who are these new rioters? Why was the exceptional deployment of 4,600 police officers insufficient to contain their violence! Were there failings in the police strategy? How, the following week, was the police deployment reviewed from top to bottom to respond to this ultra-violent confrontation? Using previously unseen contributions from Yellow Vests on the scene, rioters and police, we retrace that day’s developments in an attempt to understand how the Yellow Vest movement turned certain areas of Paris into battle fields.