The General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN) is seized, announces the prefect of police Laurent Nuñez after the threats and intimidation made by the police against young demonstrators in Paris. These were revealed in a sound recording obtained
by The World and the Loopsider website. Sexual comments, intimidation, threats, slaps: the behavior of these police officers goes against their ethical rules.
The prefect of police “decided to seize the IGPN” after the “sound recording of a police intervention during a demonstration in Paris on March 20”,
tweeted the police headquarters. This is an administrative investigation.
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humiliating words
A group of seven demonstrators were arrested and placed in police custody Monday evening in Paris, on the sidelines of a demonstration against the pension reform. They are sitting on the ground, with their backs to the wall, at the corner of rue des Minimes and rue du Béarn, in the 3rd arrondissement of the capital, according to Le Monde. These young people are suspected by the police of having participated in degradations. One of them recorded their exchanges with police officers from the BRAV-M, this unit decried for its muscular intervention methods.
We hear the officials chaining humiliating, threatening and intimidating remarks, in particular towards one of the seven young people. In a photo posted on social networks, showing the scene, they are a dozen police officers. “The next time we come, you won’t get on the bus to go to the police station, you’ll get on another thing called an ambulance to go to the hospital”can be heard in particular in the recording.
“We will take revenge on others”
In this 23-minute audio recording, two slapping sounds are also audible, before one of the police officers launches: “You’re starting to stutter! Maybe you want one again, that I put your right jaw back?”. “I hope tomorrow you are released, what are you going to take six months? Six months is good and an OQTF (obligation to leave the territory)”, said another policeman to the young man, of Chadian nationality. When one of their managers informs them that they have to move to another district of Paris, one of the police officers concludes: “You’re lucky, we’re going to get revenge on other people.”
“There are about twenty of them on motorcycles and they fall on me”, testifies for franceinfo Salomé, 22, one of the demonstrators arrested by the BRAV-M. “They sweep me, I fall on my back. When I was on the ground, I received a ‘Bitch, bitch’. I said, ‘How?’ He said ‘Shut up’ and they made me line up with six other people. It was really an anthology of gratuitous insults and threats. Physical threats saying that we could actually be happy, because another night they would have kicked our knees.”
The prefect of police of Paris “shocked”
“These remarks are serious and ethically pose very serious problems”, said Laurent Nunez on Friday evening on France 5 in the program C à vous. The referral to the IGPN is “the first decision” that the prefect took while listening to the comments made in the video. “When I hear this video, I am like everyone else, very shocked”insists the prefect.
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“We are extremely rigorous in the application of ethical rules”emphasizes Laurent Nunez. “We support the police”assures the prefect * “What they are doing at the moment is remarkable, especially when you see the violence they have to endure. And they are coping, and they are holding up.” * The prefect greets law enforcement agencies who are “very brave”. “It’s very complicated to be able to work when you take cobblestones, bolts, Molotov cocktails.” “But in return we demand a code of ethics that is irreproachable”, recalls the prefect. For Laurent Nuñez, “there is no question that I propose its dissolution” (of the BRAV-M*)*, he declared on franceinfo.
“I can’t judge”, for the Alliance union
“For the moment we have nothing. We just have an interview, a background sound where we hear colleagues talking”, declared on franceinfo Yannick Landreau, national delegate of the National Police Alliance union. Yannick Landreau confirms having heard the sound recording: “I do not judge the comments but we still need to have the whole of the investigation and the hearings of the colleagues to judge and to know the conclusions.” “I can’t judge. I can’t say what it is”he continues. “Prefect Nuñez has launched an administrative investigation. When there is an administrative investigation, we have to wait for the conclusions”.
“On the BRAV-M, there is a file that is quite damning. It is really essential for the national police to start opening the lid and start cleaning up”, retorts Sébastian Roché, director of research at the CNRS, specialist in police and security issues. The researcher points “a mass of dysfunctions in the French police” that the administration cannot “deny”. The searcher “wishes that the police re-establish positive contacts with the citizens” and that she “accept criticism”.