Policing the Gilets Jaunes.
At one of the weekly ‘act’ protests in Paris not far from La Place Sainte Madeline plain clothes police ended up behind a wall of Gilets Jaunes. As they tried to move away they ran into the back of Wilfried, a steelworker from a small town in Burgundy who has recently had a child with his wife of nine years. The policeman fell over at his feet and Wilfried, moving to try and escape the ensuing chaos, spooked a policeman whose hair-trigger instincts led him to shoot Wilfried in the face with a flashball at a range of just over a metre.
Flashballs used primarily in France are rubber bullets that are fired from weapons with the stopping power of a .38 calibre pistol. They can do real damage (as you can see here). There is an unverified recent rumour that someone shot by one lost an eye. Wilfried now sports a nasty scar on his forehead and experiences some symptoms of psychological trauma. He continues to protest, but he is more cautious.
