"Colon" vigilante units, whose unauthorized activities were conducted with the passive cooperation of police authorities, carried out "ratonnades" (literally, "rat-hunts", "raton" being a racist term for denigrating Muslim Algerians) against suspected FLN members of the Muslim community.By 1955, effective political action groups within the Algerian colonial community succeeded in convincing many of the Governors General sent by Paris that the military was not the way to resolve the conflict.