FBI raids researcher who discovered private patient data on public server (2016)

> The scale of police violence was astonishing and stomach-churning. Between November 2018 and June 2019, according to figures compiled by Médiapart, 860 protesters were injured by the police – 315 suffered head injuries; 24 lost the use of an eye; and five had hands torn off. In December 2018, an elderly woman who had no involvement in the protests was killed when police threw a grenade into her flat.

> Among these victims are not only protesters but also journalists and medics. Police have been filmed beating elderly and disabled people, as well as using tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets against peaceful protesters. The main source of injuries was ‘Flashball’ rubber bullets – a non-lethal weapon that has been banned in every EU country except France. More than 13,000 of these bullets were fired in the first three months of the protests. Another extreme weapon used by police was the GLI-F4 – a teargas grenade which contains explosives that maimed numerous protesters. The grenade was eventually banned by the French government in early 2020.

> Things got so bad that the UN called for a ‘full investigation’ into the police’s ‘excessive use of force’. Similarly, the Council of Europe’s human-rights commissioner called for an end to the use of Flashballs against protesters. Amnesty International denounced the ‘extremely heavy-handed’ policing deployed against peaceful protesters. Eventually, even the French government acknowledged it had a problem with police violence.

"you really don’t understand anything about the gendarmerie" is an interesting take for someone who ignores a paramilitary group that throws grenades at grannies, blinds people and tears off hands, and beats the elderly and disabled.

> To compare it with the American policing model is beyond ludicrous.

Au contraire, I don't remember the American police beating up the elderly and disabled - or creating disabled people - en masse, in such a short space of time. Maybe you do, but it wouldn't make the comparison ludicrous. Dismissing it, however…

[1] https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/06/02/do-french-lives-mat...

Edit: grenades at grannies, not grenades at grenades. The real mistake was giving the police grenades in the first place though.

Why would police need grenades, of all things?

Does the US police use grenades?

> i can't think of a single high-profile police violence incident where the Gendermerie were involved.

Have the US police ever killed an unarmed protestor with their hands in the air using a grenade? From[1]:

> Statements from several eye witnesses show that Rémi, 21, had his hands in the air and was calling on gendarmes to stop firing when he was struck and killed by an offensive grenade. Their accounts also cast some doubts over the version of events given by the authorities about the student's death.

Perhaps you were just unaware.

[1] https://www.mediapart.fr/en/journal/france/270316/eco-protes...

Since they do the same work, do not share and duplicate the efforts it wild make sense to just merge them.

But that would require some people to let go kingdoms.

Having worked extensively with both, the way they are organized today is a pity.

But yes, machine guns and rifles are only carried by units on special duties, normally anti-terrorism (and unfortunately Italy has a long history of internal terrorism).

Rest assured that the small town cops in Europe don’t patrol with MP5s, but that the marines at local US embassy (which is a high value target) occasionally do…

Military police in English-speaking countries usually only have jurisdiction over military installations and military personnel; they do not perform civilian policing functions except in exceptional situations such as wartime or national emergencies. By contrast, gendarmerie are military police who perform civilian policing functions in normal circumstances.

There isn't necessarily a huge difference in practice between gendarmeries and ordinary civilian police forces; gendarmeries tend to have tougher recruitment standards, a more disciplined ethos, be more heavily armed, their members will have received military basic training which covers skill areas which most civilian police training does not, etc. However, even in countries with gendarmeries, the civilian police often have elite units which are on par with those of the gendarmerie; and, in France, much of the gendarmerie are assigned to policing small towns and rural areas which is often less challenging work than that of the civilian police in the big cities.