Gare du Nord Update

All this because someone decided not to pay his fare on the Metro. Several news reports agree now that the original incident involved a 32-year-old man from the Congo. His response to being stopped for not having a Metro ticket varies from newspaper to newspaper - apparently some bystanders state that he did respond physically “en portant un coup de tete” -Of all the news reports, I thought Raphael Domenach and Benoit Hasse’s Le Parisien news report did a good job of presenting the hour by hour unfurling of events.

Some reports placed the number of youths in conflict with the police at close to 200 rather than 100. It’s interesting to note that in the first stages of the conflict, commuters continued to travel throughout the train station until the Metro and RER entrances and exits were blocked by CRS police.

The CRS or the Republican Security Corps answer to the Ministry of Defense. Blake Erhlich describes them in Paris on the Seine:
“They are the government’s formal response to that irregular question, the mob. The CRS dress, though it is thoroughly contemporary, gives the impression of black armor. They are held away from the capital, aloof, mysterious, almost invisible, to be called down like thunderbolts.”

It should be noted that the day following the incident at Gare du Nord, Metro and commuter traffic was back to normal. Because many of the onlookers at Gare du Nord brought along the video cams - you can see plenty of video footage at Daily Motion.com.

Needless to say, the politicians have been quick to use this sorry situation to further their own agendas - forcing opposing parties to take sides:
i.e. are you for enforcing the payment of Metro fares by passengers - or are you more inclined to let the occasional turnstile jumper slip through?
The comments that I’ve read range from: “The Metro tickets are too expensive. The transportation should be free.” to “I’m going to vote for ‘Le Pen’.” These were two comments that I read today in the Liberation newspaper’s comment section.

In the past I’ve spoken with passengers on the train that runs from Gare St. Lazare to Normandy via Mantes. One passenger told me: “When the controllers try to hand out fines for people taking a free ride, they just blatantly rip up the fine. The controllers don’t do anything. They’re afraid.”
That wasn’t the case yesterday.