Eleven judicial investigations have been entrusted to the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN) for a week as part of the mobilization against the disputed pension reform, announced Gérald Darmanin, Friday March 24.
“There have been eleven investigations by the general inspectorate of the national police under the authority of the magistrates which have been opened for a week,” the interior minister said on CNews. “Individual police officers and gendarmes, often under the influence of fatigue, may commit acts that are not in accordance with what they have been taught in training and ethics,” said he conceded, calling “in these cases [to] sanction them”.
At least three investigations for violence by a person holding public authority have been opened by the Paris prosecutor’s office, according to a source familiar with the matter.
One of them was opened following the filing of a complaint by the mother of Fanny, a 15-year-old high school student, who received a projectile, which she thinks was a splinter grenade, on the forehead, during a demonstration on March 11 near the Place de la Bastille. His injury earned him three days of total incapacity for work (ITT).
Another investigation was opened after the complaint of a woman who was beaten with a truncheon during a rally on Monday in the Châtelet district. According to the video of the facts produced by an independent reporter and posted on social networks, the complainant received a truncheon from a helmeted policeman, when she seemed motionless, pinned against a wall with other people.
A third investigation is aimed at a punch delivered by a police officer in the face of a protester on Monday evening in Paris, captured by a video widely relayed on the Internet.
In January, a first investigation was opened after a police officer had hit a 26-year-old man with a truncheon, who then had to have his testicle amputated, during the first day of mobilization, January 19.
Thursday, during the ninth day of action against the pension reform, numerous clashes with the police and violence punctuated the parade in the capital, at the head of the demonstration.