Warning to Les Flics

To foreign tourists, the Paris cop seems a model of quiet courtesy. He directs them to American Express and Thomas Cook with a debonair salute; he guides gladiatorial traffic with a calm nonchalance. Frenchmen look on le flic quite differently. Apart from their dislike of taking orders from anyone, they know that frequently in the hem of his natty blue cape is sewn enough buckshot to break a man's--and sometimes a woman's--nose. They have seen him wading into a crowd flailing a 6-ft. riot cane like a scythe.

Parisians recall many bloody heads across the years, especially the nine people killed in the crush when police broke up a 1962 peace rally. But the latest uproar began in April, when Cinemactor Jean-Paul (Breathless) Belmondo dared to protest that a cop was neglecting an accident victim while quizzing witnesses; Belmondo was knocked flat. During May, four prisoners detained for trifling offenses hanged themselves in their cells. There was no evidence to prove that the police were at fault, but no one could convince suspicious Frenchmen that the deaths were not caused by third-degree tactics. Paris has also gotten a little tired of the overzealous use of submachine guns issued during the past Algerian terrorist outbreaks. When a panther escaped from a circus, a flic mistook a shadow for the beast and in error plugged a passerby. Another ludicrously chopped up a cow, broken loose from a slaughterhouse, with his tommy gun.

With newspaper headlines growing ever more critical, public animosity became so great that four flics were beaten up recently. Concerned, Interior Minister Roger Frey last week called top police officials together and spoke some harsh words. He told them "to orient their essential activities toward their traditional job." "Your action will contribute most to the public peace," Frey upbraided them, "when it is carried out with humanity, sangfroid, tact and courtesy, with unrelenting care for the respect of human beings. This requires not a little urbanity in relations with the public." Will the oldest constabulary in the Western world mend its ways? One man on a beat had a plain reply: "Toi, mele toi de tes oignons [Mind your own onions]."

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