The Council of State ordered, Wednesday October 11, the Ministry of the Interior to make effective the obligation imposed on the police to wear their identification number in intervention, the RIO, and to make it more visible .

“The Minister of the Interior has not taken appropriate measures to ensure effective compliance by members of the internal security forces with the requirement of emotional and visible wearing of the individual identifier,” indicated the most high administrative court in a judgment requesting in particular that the “readability” of the RIO be “sufficient for the public”.

The Council of State had been seized by the League of Human Rights, the association Action des Chrétiens pour l’abolition de la torture, the Syndicat de la magistrature and the Union of lawyers of France seized the Council of State, considering that the obligation for police officers and gendarmes to wear an individual identification number visible on their clothing is poorly respected in practice.

The highest administrative court considers that “the absence of apparent wearing of the registration number by police and gendarmerie officers is widespread and is not limited to occasional failures linked to individual behavior”. She also judges that “the current dimensions of this identification number are unsuitable, particularly when the police intervene during rallies or gatherings”.

Hidden numbers

Also, the Council of State gives Beauvau twelve months to “take all useful measures to remedy this”, “including when the usual location of the identification number is covered by personal protective equipment (such as, for example , bulletproof vests).”

Since January 1, 2014, the 150,000 police officers and 87,000 gendarmes, even in civilian clothes (with a few exceptions, such as the RAID teams), are required, during law enforcement operations, to wear a “reference identities and organization”, the RIO: a seven-digit number inscribed on a tiny bar measuring 45 by 12 millimeters, scratched on the chest. The number, difficult to read and remember, “is far too small to be visible on most video recordings taken in the immediate vicinity”, noted the Defender of Rights in 2020.

Above all, many police officers refrain from wearing it – testimonies are pouring in – or even hide it to remain anonymous. Bernard Cazeneuve, then Minister of the Interior, was moved by this in 2016: “The voluntary concealment of the RIO number, in contravention of the rule, feeds the idea that some people fear being identified because they would act in a manner inappropriate. These practices, if they exist, must be formally prohibited. » Generally speaking, police officers are reluctant to wear their RIO. The bar fits poorly on the armbands and is covered by heavy equipment.

Discriminatory identity checks

Furthermore, the police practice of facial checks “exists” and constitutes “discrimination” for the people who undergo them, but the Council of State, contacted by several NGOs, declared itself incompetent to force the State to modify its “public policy” from top to bottom.

The highest French administrative court considered, in a press release accompanying its decision, that the measures requested by six associations and NGOs denouncing systemic practices “aim in reality at a general redefinition of public policy choices in terms of recourse to controls of identity for the purposes of suppressing delinquency and preventing disturbances to public order which do not fall within the powers of the administrative judge”. “This is why the Council of State rejects the appeal. »