News Round-Up: Paris Police Strike After PSG Riots, UK Braces for Summer of Riots, and Oxford in Fresh Trans Row

Twice a week, the editorial team of Freedom Research compiles a round-up of news that caught our eye – or what felt like under-reported aspects of news deserving more attention.

Over the past few days, the following topics attracted our attention:

• Paris Police Strike After PSG Riots

• UK Police Preparing for Summer of Riots

• Oxford in Fresh Trans Row

Paris Police Strike After PSG Riots

A move that French news outlet Valeurs Actuelles has described as “unheard of,” French police in the 8th arrondissement police station have gone on strike, from the top of the police command to the bottom, Remix News reports. This is no ordinary police precinct either, but in the heart of Paris, right next to the Élysée.

The strike began on June 3 and it involves all branches of the precinct, including the Rescue Police Brigade (BPS), the Territorial Contact Brigade (BTC), via the Anti-Crime Brigade (BAC). That means in this arrondissement, the entire workforce has ceased police operations, apart from acute emergency rescue operations, such as car accidents, a source told Valeurs Actuelles.

The decision comes after two separate issues. One was the conviction of a number of officers, who two weeks ago, were sent to prison. The other has to do with the riots that broke out during the Champions League final on May 30, which saw 890 people arrested, close to 200 officers injured, and two deaths.

Both French police unions, Alliance and Un1té, are standing behind the officers “in the face of this political and judicial abandonment,” wrote Valeurs Actuelles.

UK Police Preparing for Summer of Riots

UK police forces have been placed on alert for a potential “summer of disorder” following widespread public anger over the murder of 18-year-old Henry Nowak and the controversial police response at the scene, The Telegraph reports.

National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) chairman Gavin Stephens has instructed forces in England and Wales to prepare contingency plans – the third consecutive year such measures have been activated amid rising community tensions.

Nowak, a first-year accountancy and finance student at the University of Southampton, was stabbed five times on 3 December 2025 while walking home from a night out. His killer, 23-year-old Vickrum Singh Digwa, used a ceremonial knife and was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 21 years in late May 2026.

The case has provoked intense outrage due to body-worn camera footage showing officers initially believing Digwa’s false claim that Nowak had racially abused him and knocked off his turban. Instead of immediately aiding the victim, officers handcuffed the dying Nowak behind his back as he repeatedly said he had been stabbed and couldn’t breathe. One officer reportedly replied, “I don’t think you have, mate.” Initial police statements appeared to treat Nowak as the aggressor before being revised. Hampshire Police’s Chief Constable has apologised, and the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) is investigating the handling of the incident.

The controversy has fuelled protests in Southampton and elsewhere, with accusations of “two-tier policing” and debates over race, knife crime, and public trust in the police.

US Vice President JD Vance publicly blamed the murder on “the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants,” prompting UK Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy to call him and state that he was “wrong,” saying the case had “nothing to do with mass migration.”

Tensions have been further heightened by a separate stabbing in Belfast on 8 June 2026. A Sudanese asylum seeker was charged with attempted murder after a brutal knife attack in north Belfast that left a man in his 40s with serious injuries to his face, neck, and back. The incident quickly sparked anti-immigration protests, with vehicles and a bus set on fire and pockets of disorder reported across the city.

As summer approaches, authorities are activating national plans to maintain order while investigations continue.

Oxford in Fresh Trans Row

An Oxford professor has been forced to cancel his lecture series on gender law after disruption from pro-trans rights protesters who branded him a bigot, The Times reports.

Dr Michael Foran, 32, an associate professor of law, said that he had cancelled talks on how sex and gender had affected the law in relation to controversies over single-sex spaces, freedom of expression, privacy, sport and sexual intimacy.

Footage posted online shows how trans activists interrupted two talks Foran gave on this topic. The videos capture the activists – understood to be students at the university – standing in front of his lectern and telling the audience he was bigoted, urging them not to give him a platform.

In a recording of a lecture on May 29, taken by an audience member, one of the protesters claimed that Foran “masks his transphobia behind a thin veneer of academia”.

The protester added: “If you are here in a critical capacity to challenge his ideas … that is not the same as refusing to platform him. He will not be convinced by your arguments. Please join me in walking out and refusing to platform this bigot.”

In a video of the second lecture on June 5, the same two protesters could again be seen addressing the audience at the start of the event. However, on this occasion their voices were largely drowned out by objections to their presence from those attending.

After they left, two more activists hidden in the audience stood up and continued to protest before they were escorted out.

A university source who was present at the lectures but has asked to remain anonymous has revealed that the university proctors’ office gave permission for the protests to go ahead.

The students who attended also confirmed that, although they had made complaints to the proctors about the disruptive and intimidating nature of the demonstration at Foran’s first talk, the officials allowed the activists to protest at a second lecture.