French police officials did not return messages seeking comment on how officers are trained. Union members have an incentive to blame the training, rather than their officers or a law they had supported.
The bill, which also allowed officers to shoot at fleeing suspects deemed a danger, passed with an overwhelming majority in February 2017.
But firing on moving or speeding cars is a tactic that many cities have banned as too dangerous. New York Police Department officers, for example, have been generally prohibited from firing at cars since 1972.
“What France is doing is in many ways an anomaly,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a group in Washington whose members are police executives from major city, county and state forces.
In the past, French police officers were allowed to fire on vehicles only when the officers were in immediate danger, the same right of self-defense as any citizen. Police unions, a powerful political force in France, argued, though, that they should have broader authority to fight crime and rules that matched those of the gendarmerie, a French police force with military status.
