After violent riots in Lausanne – Mayor sees “systemic discrimination” in police
A 17-year-old in Switzerland dies while fleeing from the police. As a result, hundreds of young people set up blockades with burning containers and garbage bins. Now, authorities are releasing initial findings from their investigation. Accusations of racism against officials are exacerbating the crisis.
Following the death of a teenager during a police operation that sparked violent riots in Lausanne, Swiss authorities have released initial findings from the investigation. The public prosecutor's office for the canton of Vaud announced on Tuesday that the 17-year-old scooter rider lost control of the vehicle while fleeing from police, as reported by the Keystone-SDA news agency. Witness statements indicated that there was no contact between the police vehicle and the scooter at the time of the accident.
Following the teenager's death, violent protests erupted in Lausanne. According to police, 150 to 200 people, some of them masked, erected blockades of burning containers and trash cans overnight into Tuesday. Police used four rubber bullets, 54 tear gas grenades, and a tank fire engine to disperse the demonstrators. The emergency services were pelted with stones, construction fences, Molotov cocktails, and pyrotechnic devices. Police reportedly arrested seven people.
According to local police, a demonstration involving around 100 young people escalated on Sunday evening. Garbage containers were set on fire and a bus was damaged.
The protests were triggered by the death of a 17-year-old scooter rider who was accused of theft and crashed into a wall while fleeing from the police on Sunday morning.
However, according to the public prosecutor's office of the canton of Vaud, at the time of the accident there was a "considerable distance" between the scooter and the pursuing police vehicle.
This was the third death during a police operation in Lausanne in less than three months. Since 2016, seven people have died during police operations in the canton of Vaud, where Lausanne is located. Five of them were men of African descent.
The protests were further fueled by the suspension of four police officers in Lausanne, who were forced to resign on Monday. Previously, racist, sexist, and otherwise discriminatory messages that the officers had shared in two private chat groups on the online service WhatsApp had become public.
“There is a systemic discrimination problem that needs to be addressed,” Lausanne Mayor Grégoire Junod told broadcaster RTS.
"The city administration is deeply shocked and outraged," the city of Lausanne said in a statement. The "credibility of the police as a whole and the necessary relationship of trust between the public and the police" have been damaged.
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