There's actually quite an interesting documentary on Euronews about the situation, made by an italian reporter living in France for over 2 decades (so she doesn't seem to be trying to push one the political sides in France).

It's interesting that the miltarization of the police started with Sarkozy who stopped the whole "police in proximity" that was being done before with a lot of success. Interestingly enough Sarkozy has in the meanwhile been convicted for corruption, which does hint at why he transformed the style of policing from a "close to the population" style to a "thugs of those in power" one - crooks in power often treat the legitimized use of force for law enforcement purposes as a possible mechanism to enforce their will on the rest whilst hiding behind "the Law" (which they themselves made: a lot of the legitimization of the use of excessive force by the police in France came via laws passed in the meanwhile exactly for that purpose).

I've lived in a couple of countries in Europe and at least in Britain and Portugal the politicians in government nowadays display quite the authoritarian and even anti-democratic tendencies.