France’s elite police force, the RAID, was deployed to the cities of Bordeaux, Lyon, Lille and Roubaix on Thursday night (06/29).
Protests are flaring up across the country over a shooting of a 17-year-old teenager named as Nahel M who was of Algerian heritage by a police officer.
Why the protest?
On June 27 after a French police officer shot an unarmed teenager, French news media, citing anonymous police sources, initially reported that the teenager, driving a yellow Mercedes, had plowed into police officers, leading one of them to shoot. But video soon surfaced on Twitter that seemed to contradict the police. The video shows teenager was stopped by two police officers, one of whom has his gun drawn. As the teenager drives away, a loud bang is heard as an officer appears to shoot within point blank range in broad daylight.
So what is the RAID unit?
Recherche, Assistance, Intervention, Dissuasion (RAID)
France has three counterterrorism units RAID, BRI, and GIGN that respond to attackers. BRI and RAID are urban police units that fall under the French Ministry of the Interior (Ministere de l’Interieur). GIGN falls under the national Gendarmerie, or essentially the National Guard. BRI focuses on counterterrorism exclusive to Paris, RAID’s charter is counterterrorism on a national scale, and GIGN’s mission is worldwide counterterrorism.
RAID its primary national counterterrorist force, endowing it with a hefty arsenal of weapons and capabilities. Recent responses by RAID include the Charlie Hebdo assault and the Bataclan Theater massacres in Paris, France. An American equivalent force could well be the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Teams (HRT).
RAID handles the following
- Nationwide counterterrorism
- Hostage crisis response
- Civil uprising response
- Abduction and arrest of felony or high-profile criminals
They specialize in the following
- Close-quarters combat/battle (CQC/CQB)
- Precision long-gun support
- Technical explosives attack and disposal teams
- Attack-dog handlers
- Hostage-crisis negotiators