French Police Raid Housing Projects to Find Last Year's Rioters

They sent over 1,000 officers before dawn and arrested 35 people. Quite a ratio there. I would NOT want to wake up to 1,000 officers of any sort storming through the streets. What a way to wake up - must have felt like the occupation. Officers came under gunfire last November, but none were killed.
From the Associated Press:

"The riots in November erupted after two teenage boys were killed in a motorbike crash with a police car in Villiers-le-Bel, a town with a large immigrant population. Of the 130 police officers injured in the violence, at least 10 were hit by buckshot or pellets.

The violence echoed the rioting that raged for three weeks in 2005 in immigrant-heavy poor neighborhoods across the country. In both cases, the riots exposed the frustration of Arab or black, French-born children or grandchildren of immigrants from France's former colonies over entrenched discrimination and isolation."

So, the solution to this....

"Riot police, some with their faces covered or wielding battering rams, swept into the town north of Paris — Villiers-le-Bel — where the rioting was concentrated. Police also conducted house-to-house searches in neighboring Sarcelles, Gonesse and Arnouville.

"Police arrested 35 people, all suspected of attacking officers in the riots, said prosecutor Marie-Therese de Givry. Four suspects were still at large, the prosecutor said.

"About 100 officers surrounded a building across from a library and preschool in Villiers-le-Bel that had been burned down by rioters last year. The officers battered down doors there and arrested at least two people.

"We know this can be traumatizing in families with children," said de Givry. But "there was an important risk that suspects would flee."

Sorry kids... what on earth? Couldn't have anything to do with the elections coming up in early March now could it?

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5glmQPSJ6X10Dn_KUGGo7rsTWRn1AD8USVTB81