France looks a lot like the US as protests over a police killing spread, dividing the country between anti-racist and law-and-order factions

• Violent protests have rocked France after the police killing of a 17-year-old during a traffic stop.
• Protesters accuse police of systemic racism against France's non-white minorities.

French police arrested more than 1,300 people on Friday — the fourth consecutive day of nationwide civil unrest.

The protests first erupted earlier in the week after news broke that police killed a 17-year-old of North African descent, with scenes of burning buildings and cars prompting French President Emmanuel Macron to postpone a state visit to Germany.

Protests intensified ahead of a funeral for the teenager, identified only as Nahel M., that was held on Saturday morning in Nanterre, a suburb of Paris.

Police shot the teenager on Tuesday morning during a traffic stop outside the French capital. A passenger in the car told a French news outlet that the killing occurred after police had assaulted the driver, who the passenger said was pulled over after driving in a bus lane, causing him to take his foot off the vehicle's brake.

"Don't move or I'll put a bullet in your head," the passenger claimed the officer said, according to Sky News. One policeman has since been charged with homicide.

In 2017, French lawmakers passed a measure that permits law enforcement to use lethal force during traffic stops when an officer feels their life is in danger, which critics say has led to an increase in deadly incidents.

The police killing has exposed long-running animosity between law enforcement and France's non-white minority population, reminiscent of the Black Lives Matter protests sparked in the United States by the police killing of George Floyd in 2020.

Indeed, Friday's unrest came after a statement was issued by a union representing about half of French police in which the protesters were referred to as "vermin."

"Faced with these savage hordes, it's no longer enough to call for calm, it must be imposed," the statement said.

Some 37 people were killed during police operations in France in 2021, the BBC reported, which equates to 0.5 deaths for every one million people. By comparison, the outlet noted, the rate in the US is about 3.5 per million.

Ariane Bogain, a lecturer in politics at Northumbria University, told state broadcaster France 24 that the country needs to address systemic racism and how it manifests itself in policing.

"What we've seen over the past few days is a lot of discourse about law and order, about restoring order, about how awful this violence is," Bogain said. "What we haven't heard is a discussion of the structural causes of all of this and a long-term solution from it by the authorities."