Last but not least: criticism from within

His face is masked, his voice sharp and his fingers dig straight into the open wounds of the French state apparatus. Not unusual so far for a rapper. But the man who calls himself "Le Brigadier" and claims on his website that he wants to "break the law of silence and denounce the working methods of the police" must therefore fear for his job. He has been a police officer in the French department of Seine-Saint-Denis near Paris for over ten years, he says. In every department, in other words, where over one and a half million people live in an area of 236 square kilometers, where unemployment is in the high double-digit percentage range and where weeks of youth unrest broke out in 2005, the "Brigadier" has published four songs on the Internet so far. He sings about problems with the police, suicidal officers and "false culprits" who are only turned into criminals by the police. His plan: he wants to release his debut album at the beginning of 2009 and then retire from the police force. Rap is a kind of self-therapy for him to cope with the pressure of his job, he told the newspaper Le Parisien. However, it is quite possible that his identity as a police officer is just a marketing ploy to boost sales of his CD. Perhaps Sarkozy is now launching one of his loyal followers to correct the image of the police.