France about to get a "Rudi" awakening?
Do the French have squee-gee people? It was a true blessing when one could drive into and out of the Lincoln Tunnel in NYC without having been descended on by swarms of squee-gee's.
A Crime-Weary France Plans a Crackdown
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
nytimes.com
ARIS, Oct. 23 — Squatters who occupy private land will face prison terms. "Passive soliciting" by prostitutes will become a crime. Beggars and Gypsies will be banned from using pressure tactics and working in groups.
These and other penalties were approved by the French cabinet today as part of a sweeping anti-crime bill introduced by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.
The most burning issue in the presidential campaign last spring was crime, especially in the rough, poor suburbs of big cities, and the center-right government is determined to show that it is responding to a widespread feeling that the country is drowning in a crime wave.
Over the last several years, crime in France has shifted from property thefts to violent crimes against innocent victims, including attacks on firemen and rescue workers and gang rapes of teenage girls.
Just this month, Mayor Bertrand Delanoë was stabbed by an attacker during a festival at City Hall. That was followed by two drive-by shootings outside cafes in Dunkirk close to the Belgian border in which a truck driver killed a 17-year-old youth and wounded three others, apparently because he hated North African Arabs. Then, in a poor suburb of Paris, a 17-year-old North African girl was burned to death in the garbage depot at her housing complex by a youth who was believed to have been her jilted boyfriend.
Those incidents followed a failed shooting attack on President Jacques Chirac on July 14, France's independence day, and the killing of eight local councilmen outside Paris in March.
A study by a Sorbonne University researcher this year indicated that violent crime had quadrupled in the last eight years.
But the "Sarkozy law," as the bill is called, has already been widely criticized by more than two dozen civil liberty and left-wing groups, who accused the government on Monday of "waging a war against the poor" and using tactics of totalitarianism.
"Because it targets without distinction beggars, the homeless, young people, travelers, prostitutes, activists who may conduct protests," they said in a statement, "the text creates a republic where poverty is turned into a crime and where the expression of revolt becomes a crime." The proper response, they said, is for citizens to take to the streets in protest.
In an interview in Thursday's issue of Le Monde, Mr. Sarkozy strongly defended the bill, saying, "It's precisely for the abandoned people of France that we are proposing this bill." Taking a swipe at his critics, he added, "For several years, nothing has been done against this insecurity, although certain intellectuals have denied the fear that people feel."
While exchanging sex for money is not a crime, he branded as hypocrites those who would keep prostitutes on the streets, saying, "All the human rights activists drive by the Porte de St.-Ouen, saying, `My God, poor things,' and then they drive on to dine in the city." Porte de St.-Ouen is a favorite prostitution solicitation point north of Paris.
The bill, which is expected to be approved by Parliament, will expand police powers to search vehicles, frisk individuals and take DNA samples of many more suspects. Mr. Sarkozy, who has already increased police powers as part of his crackdown, today reiterated his intention to help curb rural crime by reorganizing the police and giving them more money.
Some of the new restrictions could be far-reaching. The utterance of a threatening expletive to a policeman or a government official could bring a $30,000 fine and a two-year jail sentence; a death threat could cost $75,000.
A woman whose dress or attitude gives the impression that she is soliciting money for sex can face a fine of $3,800 or six months in jail. Clients of prostitutes who have a "vulnerability" (who suffer from illness, a psychological disorder or a disability, for example) will face three years in prison and a $45,000 fine.
In recent years, the outskirts of the major cities have been inundated by a new wave of prostitutes, many from Eastern Europe. Teenage male prostitutes from Eastern Europe often frequent the large railway stations of Paris.
The "new" prostitutes are deeply resented by Frenchwomen who call themselves the "traditional" prostitutes, and a group of those identifying themselves as such have scheduled a demonstration protesting the bill early next month.
Begging and "vagabondery," which were decriminalized in 1994 for the first time since Napoleonic times, will again become crimes under the bill |
