Next Few Hours Will Be Decisive: France Boosts Police Presence To Quell Unrest

France has deployed 45,000 officers backed by light armoured vehicles to tackle a fourth straight night of violent protests over a teenager's fatal shooting by an officer during a traffic stop.

Crack police units and other security forces were rushed across the country to quell violence and rioting over the shooting, which took place during a traffic stop in a Paris suburb on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron urged parents to keep teenagers at home to quell rioting spreading across France and says social media are fueling copycat violence.

According to AFP, Macron wants social media such as Snapchat and TikTok to remove sensitive content and said that violence is being organised online. Of young rioters, he said: "We sometimes have the feeling that some of them are living in the streets the video games that have intoxicated them."

Macron said his government would work with technology companies to establish procedures for the removal of the most sensitive content. He did not specify the content he had in mind but said, "I expect a spirit of responsibility from these platforms." French authorities also plan to request, when useful, the identities "of those who use these social networks to call for disorder or exacerbate the violence," the president said.

Macron's government has deployed 40,000 officers to restore order and make arrests over behaviour he described as unacceptable and unjustifiable. He stopped short of announcing a state of emergency, a tactic used by a previous French government in 2005 to quell rioting after the accidental deaths of two boys while they fled police.

"These next few hours will be decisive," Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote in a note to the emergency services.

"The human and material reinforcements that we are currently sending will give you (...) the means to defend the Republic and its values," he added.

17-year-old Nahel was killed by the police after being stopped for a traffic violation in the Paris suburb town of Nanterre on Tuesday. The officer who is accused of shooting him has been taken to jail, local BFM TV reported from Seine-Saint-Denis.