A week after the pre-trial detention of a Marseille (southern France) police officer for allegedly assaulting a 22-year-old young man in early July, the French Interior Minister, Gérald Darmanin, met with police unions. According to sources close to the minister, the latter “favorably welcomed [his] proposals from him and asked the General Directorate of the National Police to study his operational and legal feasibility.”
The main demand of the organizations is “a modification of article 144 of the penal procedure code”, as Unité-SGP, one of the main police unions of the neighboring country, wrote in a brochure. By accepting that this law be examined, Gérald Darmanin would be committing himself in fact to “study the law to reconsider the provisional detention of a police officer in the line of duty”, according to the same Unité-SGP brochure.
The union also calls for the creation of a “specific statute for police officers involved or investigated, in order to avoid their preventive detention”, and eventually “specialized courts and magistrates” for cases involving police officers.
This proposal follows the controversial statements by Frédéric Veaux, Director General of the French National Police, on Sunday, July 23, when he stated that a police officer “does not belong in preventive detention before his trial […] not even in case of error or serious misconduct”. The French interior minister backed these comments, telling BFMTV that Veaux “talked like a chief would to the police” and that he was “very proud that it was [his] colleague of his.”
Speaking to France 2 television channel on Friday, Socialist Party First Secretary Olivier Faure called for the resignation of Gérald Darmanin, who he said “defies the Republic” by supporting Frédéric Veaux despite the “risk of sedition”. He also called on French President Emmanuel Macron to “put order in his own house” because “there cannot be a state within a state.” In his opinion, “the independence of justice, the separation of powers and the equality of citizens before the law” are threatened by this type of comment.
According to Unité-SGP, the French interior minister also agreed to “keep bonuses in addition to salary during a suspension.” At present, civil servants continue to receive their civil servant salary if they are suspended, but not their bonuses. Finally, the trade union group wants “total anonymization of the police without fear of rejection by the Constitutional Council”, something that the minister has also promised to work on.
In 2021, the French Constitutional Council censored an article of a new law, which introduced a new crime of disseminating images of police officers in action if the intention was to harm them. Previously, Gérald Darmanin had advocated blurring the faces of officers in the exercise of their duties in videos posted on the Internet.
The organizations affirm that they will remain “attentive” and “determined” to ensure that the commitments made by Darmanin are “respected”.
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