The prefect of police reinforces his troops. Laurent Nuñez assured this Saturday, March 25 that the dissolution of Brav-M, a unit recently implicated in several cases of police violence in the context of protests against pension reform, is “obviously not in order of the day “.
“The behavior of a few individuals should not cast opprobrium on an entire unit which, in recent years, and particularly at this time, has proven its usefulness”, assured the prefect on France Info.
The Brav-M are police units circulating on motorcycles to maintain order during demonstrations in Paris, being more mobile than the CRS companies or the mobile gendarmes. Their mission is to contact the thugs to stop the damage and challenge them.
These troops are however decried for their muscular intervention methods and are under several legal investigations for violence against demonstrators. On Friday evening, the prefect of police announced that he had seized the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN) after the broadcast of an audio recording, obtained by Le Monde and Loopsider, in which we hear police officers, presented as members of the Brav-M, making insulting and humiliating remarks towards seven young demonstrators whom they had just arrested.
The Paris prosecutor’s office, for its part, opened a judicial investigation on Saturday for “willful violence by persons holding public authority and threats of crime”, following a report received in the afternoon.
Two other judicial investigations were opened this week and entrusted to the IGPN following two complaints against Brav-M police officers. The first was filed by a woman who was beaten with a truncheon on Monday evening by a helmeted police officer, when she seemed motionless, stuck against a wall with other people in the Châtelet district, according to a video posted on social media.
The second concerns the punch struck by a police officer in the face of a demonstrator the same evening, captured by a video widely relayed on the Internet. Several deputies from La France insoumise called this week for the dissolution of the Brav-M.
