Intifada or not in France — some see one thing, some another
The bosses in French police ranks see crooks, while some of those on the street seem something else entirely:
Senior officers insisted that the problem was essentially criminal in nature, with crime bosses on the estates fighting back against tough tactics…
However, not all officers on the ground accept that essentially secular interpretation of the problem. Michel Thoomis, the secretary general of the hard-line Action Police trade union, has written to Mr. Sarkozy warning of an “intifada” on the estates and demanding that officers be given armored cars in the most dangerous areas.
“We are in a state of civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists. This is not a question of urban violence any more. It is an intifada, with stones and Molotov cocktails,” he said last week. “You no longer see two or three youths confronting police, you see whole tower blocks emptying into the streets to set their ‘comrades’ free when they are arrested.”
We see a continuation of the theme that the elites imagine a different world than the actuality at street level.