[prairiebreeze]

How can a police officer stand up to a car roaring at him at more than 200km/h (125mph) in the middle of the night??

Assault rifle comes to mind, BTW, does anybody know what the "lawless housing estates" of Paris, Lyon etc. are?? I'm proud to say I didn't visit France when I was in Europe, so I wonder if these are like suburbs or more like countryside surrounding large castles or villas....or what??

Prairie

[vote_quimby]

does anybody know what the "lawless housing estates" of Paris, Lyon etc. are??

I think they're referring to neighborhoods or subdivisions.

[dennisw]

Housing estate = housing project in USA. Both are socialist schemes which started off with high ideals.

[dead]

Assault rifle comes to mind, BTW, does anybody know what the "lawless housing estates" of Paris, Lyon etc. are??

We call them "projects" in this country.

And they're close to lawless here too, but the police do actually enter them when they want to. Like when somebody is raped or murdered.

I've read that rape in these Arab French projects is de facto legal these days. Jacque le Cop can't do a zing about eet.

[coloradan]

Here's a good article on la Zone: The Barbarians at the Gates of Paris.

[July 4th]

To put it in short terms, these are the equivalent of American "projects," only in many cases much worse. Rather than trying to go in and actively control the situation, the French police are completely scared away. Laws practiced in these housing estates are a close approximation to the same laws the residents practiced while in their native Algeria and Morocco.