Fraternité at Work?

Le Monde documents (FR) recent measures by Socialist mayors to address public disorder in urbanized areas. What struck most me was how a strain of fraternité seemed to underpin many of the reforms being discussed. The idea of volunteer citizens on call to diffuse an escalating situation, which has the additional effect of minimizing police presence, could work only in a society that, in theory, treats solidarity as a paramount virtue. Hard to say whether such efforts would be effective in some of the tougher U.S. projects, where levels of violence and drug trafficking are several orders of magnitude greater than what the average French cité experiences (mostly arson to cars and buses and petty vandalism). And certainly one must be careful not to exaggerate the French neighborhoods in question as tightly-knit communities. But American mayors could definitely stand to take some cues from these initiatives.