Gérald Darmanin spoke on Thursday for the first time since the start of the crisis which agitated the police, saying he understood the “anger” of the police, at a time when their protests, linked to the incarceration of one of their own, slowed down judicial activity.
Affirming that “less than 5% of the police took sick leave or refused to go to work”, Mr. Darmanin however stressed that “fatigue” and “anger” should not make them “forget the meaning “of their mission”, “at the service of the population”.
“I understand this emotion, I understand this anger, and I understand this sadness,” he said when he left the police station in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, just before meeting the union representatives at Place Beauvau.
He was accompanied by the prefect of police of Paris Laurent Nuñez and the boss of the national police Frédéric Veaux, whose remarks had caused an outcry among the magistrates and the political class, when he had estimated that “before a possible trial, a policeman has no place in prison.”
“He’s a great policeman, a great cop,” Mr. Darmanin said of Mr. Veaux, “I totally support him.”
The police “need to have the support of their minister, which I have come to repeat, and of their hierarchical authorities”, continued Mr. Darmanin, while discontent spreads in France after leaving a year ago. Marseille week where an agent of the Bac (Anti-Crime Squad) was imprisoned as part of an investigation for police violence.
The protests, which are manifested mainly by coding 562 – a minimum service provided in the units – and by sick leave, are difficult to quantify.
The use of code 562 and sick leave have led to a marked slowdown in activity in some of the largest courts in France this week, a drop to be balanced however with the relative lull that has set in after the urban riots last month .
In Seine-Saint-Denis, one of the poorest and criminogenic departments in the country, the number of night guards is around fifteen compared to 35 to 70 usually. “It’s been a long time since we’ve seen this in Seine-Saint-Denis,” Bobigny prosecutor Eric Mathais told AFP.
In Marseille, the number of referrals is “low, even historically low” for the jurisdiction with “70-75% less activity”, indicated a local judicial source. And in Paris, this volume was halved at the duty section of the prosecution, according to another judicial source.
Thursday evening, the unions came to tell the minister that the police were “in the midst of a crisis”, according to Linda Kebbab, national secretary of the SGP Police Unit union. “Do not tell us: we understand you but you will have nothing”, she warned, specifying that it is “not a movement of defiance vis-à-vis the minister “.
His union demands, in particular, the creation of a specific status for the police officer under investigation, excluding the provisional detention of an agent acting on mission.
But for another trade unionist, Anthony Caillé (CGT-Interior-Police), “having exceptional justice for the police is not understandable, not acceptable”, “it would be serious in a republic, a democracy”.
The trigger for the movement came from Marseille with the incarceration of a BAC police officer, suspected of having beaten a 22-year-old man, along with three other colleagues, on the night of July 1 to 2. These facts occurred during the riots that ignited the country following the death of Nahel, killed on June 27 in Nanterre during a roadside check, by a police officer, also placed in pre-trial detention.
In the Marseille case, four police officers were indicted for violence in a meeting by a person holding public authority with the use or threat of a weapon resulting in an ITT (total incapacity for work) of more than eight days. One of them was therefore imprisoned.
The victim, Hedi, had testified in La Provence to having been beaten up, after having received an LBD shot in the temple. In an interview with Konbini, Wednesday, he appears with “a part of the skull less”, says having to walk with a helmet and not seeing with his left eye.
The policeman’s appeal against his pre-trial detention will be examined on August 3 by the investigating chamber in Aix-en-Provence.
“It will be a very important day. The problem for us is the placement in pre-trial detention”, insists David, a 43-year-old police officer in Nancy, who is in code 562, “protest symbol”.
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7/27/2023 21:44:36 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP