“It was not a desire for vengeance, but a desire for justice,” the lawyer told the court at a trial I attended a few months before I started my ethnographic research on urban policing in the banlieues of Paris.1 The defendants were seven police officers indicted for acts of violence that had occurred a year earlier. The photographs of the plaintiff, a man from Turkey, whose swollen and bruised face appeared on the front page of a Turkish monthly soon after the incident, left little doubt about the brutality he had endured at the hands of the law enforcement agents. Based on the complete case file given to me by the public prosecutor after a conversation we had later on, I could piece together the story of the unfortunate man. On New Year’s Eve, the local police station had received a phone call from the resident of a housing project who was reporting a scuffle that had started at a family party after intruders had tried to get into the community hall where it was held. It was late in the night. The officers on duty, who had been celebrating the holiday and were by then fairly intoxicated, rushed to the scene ten miles away, lights flashing and sirens wailing. More than two dozen agents from neighboring precincts hurriedly joined them. All were heavily equipped with riot gear, hel-

中文翻译：

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警察就是惩罚

“这不是复仇的渴望，而是正义的渴望，”在我开始对巴黎郊区城市警务进行人种学研究的几个月前，我参加的一次审判中，律师告诉法庭。 1 被告是七名警察官员因一年前发生的暴力行为而被起诉。原告是一名来自土耳其的男子，事件发生后不久，他的肿胀和瘀伤的脸出现在土耳其一家月刊的头版上，他的照片让人毫不怀疑他在执法人员手中遭受的暴行。根据我们后来的谈话，公诉人给我的完整案卷，我可以拼凑出那个不幸的人的故事。在新年前夜，当地警察局接到了一个住房项目居民的电话，他报告说，在入侵者试图进入举行家庭聚会的社区会堂后，在家庭聚会上爆发了混战。已经是深夜了。值班人员一直在庆祝节日，当时已经相当陶醉，赶到十英里外的现场，灯光闪烁，警报器鸣笛。来自邻近辖区的两十几名特工急忙加入了他们。所有人都配备了大量的防暴装备，直升机 灯光闪烁，警笛鸣响。来自邻近辖区的两十几名特工急忙加入了他们。所有人都配备了大量的防暴装备，直升机 灯光闪烁，警笛鸣响。来自邻近辖区的两十几名特工急忙加入了他们。所有人都配备了大量的防暴装备，直升机