Libération, July 15, 2009.

“Flash-ball: blunder weapon,” reads the Libération headline, one week after incidents in Montreuil, a Paris suburb. On 8 July filmmaker Joachim Gatti, protesting against the forced eviction of a squat, lost an eye when police flash-balled him. The French daily denounces the “police violence” committed during what Montreuil’s mayor Dominique Voynet says was a peaceful demonstration.

“Joachim Gatti is at least the seventh person to have lost an eye to this weapon,” inveighs Libération. “The use of flash-balls, like that of Tasers, has to be better regulated, and the police […] better trained.” The use of this firearm is actually confined to situations of legitimate self-defence, and aiming at the face or head is officially prohibited. For sociologist Fabien Jobard, “brutality is often the sign of police losing control over the situation.”