[France] The Police Station Attack.

[F2d5thCav]

@"NightskyeB4Dawn" 

FWIW, I don't think they're trying to push buttons with "suburb".

The word in French is banlieu.  The situation in Paris is this --

The city center is kept somewhat orderly.  Of course, neighborhoods where the rich and well-connected live are the best protected.  What makes Paris so geographically large is that it is surrounded by banlieu's.  I don't have a crime map for all of the banlieu's but know that some of them arose as housing projects* for other-than-French ethnic groups after World War II.  And those banlieu's (suburbs) have been plagued with crime for years.

Even so, outright attacks on police stations is a relatively new development.

* Detail note.  Where these projects were built were typically sleepy towns on the outskirts of Paris before World War II.  The non-French parts of the population increased following World War I, but really took off in the 1960s when France abandoned attempts at control of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia.

Cheers