I heard the riots started when 2 muslim youths were electrocuted while hiding in a utility shed, having been chased there by the police.
It's the ghetto thing. Any sane human locked up without hope, resources, or any sense of participation or contol over their life is going to do anything, something, to get free of that. What the French can do about it... dunno.
Yeah, police brutality is a norm in France, or at least it was when I lived there back in the middle 1980's. I was a witness to a bus breakin in Nice. The cops came, took the descriptions from me and the girl I was with (they messed up an awesome date with her, arg). Within 20 minutes they rolled up, closed the curtains in the windows, asked us to ID the suspects. They grabbed two young males out of the back of a cramped station wagon, made them kneel facing the sidewalk, we ID'd them (and at that point I felt guilty about recognizing them). The two guys began to whimper and beg. The cops then invited the bus driver who lived next door out into the street, handed him a baton and turned their backs while he had a few minutes to beat the crap out of them. When he left the cops took over for at least five more minutes then threw them unconscious back into the wagon and left. We were thanked, the date was over (she thought I was too soft a Yank for feeling bad about what we'd just been a part of) and I puked all the rest of the night. I called the American embassy the next morning traumatized and they laughed at me, saying, "That's the French. Obey their laws while you're here, okay?" Yeah, no problem. It makes me wonder, if that's still the norm for police conduct, no wonder the rioting is still going on.
