French anti-terror investigators probe True Crime Community link to school shooting

This is apropos. The French anti-terrorism prosecutor has taken over the investigation into a school shooting near Marseille after an initial probe found the 14-year-old suspect appeared to belong to a group called the True Crime Community. Two teachers were shot and wounded after a student opened fire with a hunting rifle that had been hidden inside a guitar case. Monty Francis has more. This is where investigators questioned a 14-year-old suspect, trying to understand what could have led him to bring a hunting rifle to school in a guitar case and open fire, wounding a headmaster and a teacher. Under questioning, the teen told investigators he wanted revenge on school staff and that he had been humiliated and bullied by his classmates. He also expressed remorse. Prosecutors say early findings suggest the young suspect was active online with a group called the True Crime Community, or TCC, a forum accused of glorifying mass killings, particularly in the U.S. On social media, the young man allegedly posted this photo, flashing a hand signal to announce an imminent attack. We recently spoke to an expert at France's domestic intelligence agency, who said certain online posts are meant to incite violence. A manifesto is meant to get other people to follow in your footsteps. So the author takes his own frustration, his own unhappiness, and turns it into something almost political. Outside the suspect's school near Marseille, his classmates told us they saw no warning signs. We could have never imagined he'd do something like that. Maybe he really wasn't doing well, and we didn't see it. I really don't know. Prosecutors say the 14-year-old has admitted to the shooting, but denies that he, quote, wanted to kill. To discuss, we're joined now in studio by Alexandre Rod, author, researcher and security consultant specialising in issues related to terrorism and also violent extremism. Thanks so much for coming into studio this evening to speak with us. So the true crime community, we heard about it there in that report. It isn't a conventional extremist organisation as such. Talk to us about what exactly it is and why it can potentially be dangerous. It's mostly an online ecosystem. We try to bring together people with an interest in violent crime, going from like a mainstream interest to it, into something more darker, and people try to emulate and kind of commit attacks in relation to previous attacks. It started in its new form in 1999, as the Columbine shooting, and evolved through the years and was kind of catalyzed through the COVID period into something bigger, more globalized, and with a bigger community online. And what exactly draws people, do you think, to these communities? Is it because they have an interest in violent crime, they're likely to commit a violent crime, or are they just kind of, you know, they want to be part of something, feeling that they're belonging to some kind of crime? There are a number of things. I think the first thing would be an interest in violent crime in general, fascinated by violent crime, and especially targeted violence against schools. there's a will to kind of join that club and be part of that club by committing an attack and joining it at the same time but it's not a group as the way we can discuss it there's no membership like you are an affiliate to that ecosystem and how do police actually go about investigating whether or not somebody was part of something like this we saw in that report you know the a photograph of a gesture that could be interpreted very innocently so where do police even begin when they're starting an investigation? It starts mostly with training. First, I have a chance to train the French National Police, French National Gendarmerie and the education system about those kind of signs. It goes from something really obvious to something more subtle. So it's something to be considered. Training is the first option. Knowing the environment, knowing the threat, it's been a growing threat in France, but in the rest of Europe and the rest of the world for the last few years. So that's where I would start. And we presume the vast majority of people who might be members of this kind of community or a website, like they don't actually have any intention of committing a crime. So how do you kind of prevent something like, you know, some kind of tragedy occurring? Where do police begin with that? It's always difficult, to be honest. It comes with, like, knowing your community, having good relationships with teachers, with headmasters. You have to talk to them about, like, do you have children that have been showing signs of something? It could be, yep, the discussions and see what can be done from there. Once again, it's a subject we've been looking on for the last few years. There have been a number of arrests in France and a number of attacks before, to be honest, before last year. all by now the second one this year it's been a known phenomenon Do communities like this end up normalizing violence and glamorizing it so to speak? I think there is a number of tiers in the TCC, first people are kind of mainstream interest in violent crime which is quite common all over the world, there is a number of people kind of identifying with violent crime would be the second tier, the third tier I think would be something more about the interest in violence especially and the violent aspect of it and the fourth tier where people try to emulate attacks by going to offline violence so when does you know perhaps a morbid fascination with true crime with websites and communities like this kind of migrate into something darker it depends on the individual depending on the access you can have to a weapon that's something where that plays uh and in kind of environment is raised on we have a number of people who kind of like doesn't don't migrate to violence because someone intervened and stop that and like are these kind of communities open to Anybody, can any internet user simply go online or is there some kind of process in terms of becoming a member, becoming a trusted kind of member of the community? There's no real membership, there's more an affiliation. Everybody can reach that kind of platform if they want to. It's not something you find by mistake, but it's something you can easily accrue if you're interested in the subject. So, you know, you talk a little bit about education. is that really the key here or is there something to be said also about who's actually accountable for these websites there's something to be done by the website one of the issue we have is like if you look at kind of classic terrorist content online it's easy to moderate to moderate we know what to look for we know what to forbid we know what to delete for those kind of content it's more subtle it asks for you to have a real knowledge of the subject that gesture is to me as a clear sign which is probably not for most people so it's harder for the platform to moderate and the issue with moderation anyway the platform can refuse and try to slow down the effort and do other you know popular platforms you might think of TikTok do they also play a role here in glorifying this kind of content the TCC evolved with the technology at the same time what made it possible was the rise of social media in the late 2010s was mostly about on Tumblr Then during the COVID period, we went on Discord. And now we have a variety of platforms, including the one I quoted, and TikTok. So is it a case that, you know, young people who may have an interest in this kind of content, they're stumbling across it rather than perhaps going and looking specifically to more extremist kind of communities? It's an interesting question. Usually you can find students who have an interest in it. It can be just curiosity as a teenager, but it's really someone who just stumbled on it and then turned into it. usually you have kind of interest if you kind of reach those websites but once you're in it because of the algorithm you can get stuck into that kind of content and are the you know you spoke a little earlier about French authorities and what they're actually doing here are existing counter-terrorism strategies equipped to deal with this kind of you know these violent online subcultures or these various different websites this isn't the only one the true crime community no no not at all i I think it's an interesting question. For the first time, we have one of the TCC-related events being qualified as terrorism, which is new for us. In France, it's kind of new for Europe, to be honest. We have a few American cases, but it hasn't been in the way. So I'm interested to see how the case is going to go. Is the terrorist qualification the right tool to look into the TCC? It's definitely new. And how complicated is the response to all of this made by the fact that, you know, these people aren't necessarily all based in the same country? We're talking about websites that can be accessed presumably anywhere in the world. That's definitely an issue. And we saw a globalization of the threat. Since September 8th, we saw now 13 attacks linked to the TCC in the Philippines, the United States, Slovakia, Croatia, Poland. That's three attacks last week. And South Africa had one this week, plus France. So we saw a globalization and you need important international cooperation to be able to resolve that. And is that international cooperation there, or do you see perhaps differences between how American authorities might respond to these threats and how we do here in Europe? There's definitely a better expertise in North America in general. People, law enforcement especially, have been quite aware of the subject and able to respond faster. Well, we see those kind of alerts coming from the US to European partners to say, I think you have someone you should look at because of something that's been detected online. And in relation to the shooting that we saw here in France, we obviously at this point don't know what motivated this particular attack, but in your experience, speaking more generally, not specifically related to the incident in France, what actually motivates these perpetrators? I think the gain of status. You want to claim that lineage of being part of that Columbine shooting and the follow-up, like at Virginia Tech or San Diego, and you want to join that club by being one who committed an attack and being known online for doing it. And, you know, if we're speaking about a young perpetrator here, somebody who might be a minor, might be still in school, there are a whole load of questions there in relation to what actually happens to that minor if it is a student that is responsible for something like this. It's a big question, to be honest. It's a difficult question. Most of the perpetrators are minors or young adults. There are two different situations in those cases. It takes a number of questions about criminal justice in regard to minors. the terrorism aspect too will be interesting to follow, and the fact that prevention efforts have to start pretty early if you want to be able to detect. And are there shared characteristics between people who are ultimately found responsible for these kind of crimes? teenagers, a few young adults, mostly male, but it's kind of similar for every violent crime, but we saw a feminization of the threat. You see, it's kind of growing quickly. We had two attacks last week, one in Turkey and one in Poland, committed by women. Excellent. We'll have to leave it there for now. Thank you so much, though, for your expertise and for coming in to speak with us in studio this evening. That's Alexandre Rod, author, researcher and security consultant. Well, that is it from us for now. Stay with us, though, for more world news on France 24.