Since the mobilizations against the labor law in 2016, a little music has been going up: more and more French people are afraid to go out to demonstrate, for fear of being victims of violence. A report, published on April 13 by the Paris Observatory of Public Liberties, accuses the Brigades for the Repression of Violent Action Motorcyclists (BRAV-M) of “intimidating” practices. Heard on April 5 by the law commissions of the National Assembly and the Senate on the use of force by the police and the gendarmes during the demonstrations of recent weeks, in particular in Sainte-Soline (Deux-Sèvres), the Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin rejected all responsibility, slide show and supporting videos.
Images, this is precisely what Paul Moreira went to look for in the field, during the revolt of the “yellow vests” between 2018 and 2021, to sign his documentary investigation In the name of maintaining order. He notes that the latter has been militarizing for fifty years, in France and in the United States.
Story full of shadows
In the first episode, titled “Step Back”, Paul Moreira describes the progressive radicalization of the police in the face of “yellow vests” at the end of 2018 – on December 8, the gendarmerie employed armored vehicles in the heart of Paris, unheard of – and the generalization of traps to control and arrest demonstrators, a technique deemed illegal by the Council of State in June 2021.
In the second, titled “Almost fatal”, the focus is on the rubber bullet thrower (LBD), employed by the national police since 1995, who can be seen injuring and sometimes seriously mutilating protesters all over the planet. . Targeted and controlled use is impossible, but this type of supposedly “non-lethal” weapon continues to be used.
“I want you to have weapons that you can use”, justified the interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy at the end of 2005, when the uprisings of Clichy-sous-Bois (Seine-Saint-Denis) broke out, following of the death of two teenagers chased by the police. “The first laboratory is the neighborhoods, the suburbs, the immigrant populations or the sons and daughters of immigrants”, develops Pierre Douillard-Lefèvre, sociologist, injured by an LBD when he was a high school student.
The back and forth between the eloquent reality on the ground and the confrontation of officials of the time build a story full of shadows. Thus pass in front of the camera of Paul Moreira, Michel Delpuech, former prefect of police of Paris, Claude Guéant, former director general of the national police and former minister of the interior or, the most interesting, Norm Stamper, the ex-responsible from the Seattle police. It was he who gave the order to use force against the famous demonstration on the sidelines of the WTO (World Trade Organization) summit at the end of 1999 – the first of its kind to have seen a black bloc act (Frenchified in “ black balaclavas”). The testimony, sometimes directly in demonstration, of Laurent Bigot, former sub-prefect who became a “yellow vest”, is also valuable.
Above all, with the insights of sociologists Fabien Jobard (author of Politics of Disorder, Le Seuil, 2020) or Pierre Douillard-Lefèvre (L’arme à l’œil, Altérité, 2016), the film outlines elements of explanation, relevant but incomplete, of this risky evolution of policing.
