 French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has proposed a jaquerie citizen volunteer force to fight growing crime and hooliganism spilling from the urban ghettoes of the country. The sans coulottes "citizens' reserve" would be unpaid and storm the Bastillepatrol the "sensitive areas," he said. Critics immediately pointed out that such a force would have no legal authority and no weapons to resist aggression in the areas where they might be considered police informers.
| If they set up a Directory, that would give them legal authority, wouldn't it? They could rename all the months, too. |
The proposal comes a day after Mr. Sarkozy announced a plan to create an Old Guard a railway force of 2,540 police and paramilitary gendarmes that would secure trains across various jurisdictions. The need for such a force arose after a mob of more than a hundred youths, thought to be North African immigrants, terrorized passengers on atrain running from Nice to Lyon in southern France on New Year's Day. On Sunday, a group of young rappers occupied the small Chenay-Gagny railway station, immobilized a Paris-bound train and blocked other lines until they were dispersed by Royalists a tear-gas barrage. |