In the flood of violent images filmed this Thursday in Paris, this is undoubtedly the most striking. A law enforcement officer appears to be using a semi-lethal defense bullet launcher, while he is in close combat with demonstrators.
This video, which accumulates tens of thousands of views, prompted the Paris public prosecutor's office to open an investigation this Friday for "intentional violence by anyone responsible for public authority".
IGPN, the “police force”, was seized of the investigation. It will have to determine which unit was engaged in this stampede. It would be staff belonging to the BRAV, intervention unit of the Paris police prefecture (PP), and not CRS specialized in maintaining order.
The images do not seem to leave room for doubt as to the illegal nature of such a shot. The use of the LBD, described as an “intermediate defense”, is supervised to avoid serious injuries. “The defense ball launcher is part of a very specific employment framework: the response to projectile jets, in the event of a character assault, or when there is no other choice to defend the land occupied by the police, ”recalls a police source. Who continues: “Obviously, the situation that we see in the image does not correspond to this definition, especially as the colleagues move forward. In addition, the minimum regulatory distance, set at three meters, does not seem to be respected. It remains to be seen whether the shot is intentional or accidental.
VIDEO. Suspected LBD shooting: images
The Paris police headquarters denied the Parisian any mistakes. "Taken to part", the police said she only responded with the help of "intermediate means of defense: tear gas and LBD".
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In other words, the police authority admits the use of the LBD in the head procession on rue Saint-Lazare (IXth arrondissement), but it refuses to say if this was the case on the video filmed around 4:05 p.m.
Everyone recognizes the noise of the LBD
We contacted the author of this video, described as "fragmented and out of context" by the prefecture. We also joined several other witnesses to the scene, including street medics. And in the opinion of all, the detonation heard corresponds to a LBD shot. All recognize the characteristic sound, this "plop" heard dozens of times from previous demonstrations. Laurent Bigot, who filmed the sequence, is certain. He who does not remember such a hostile climate, "even after a year of yellow vests". “The scene is going so fast, it's surreal. I hear the noise of the LBD then I see the movement of the crowd. But that's it, "says one of the street medics.
Indeed, none of the people questioned can attest that one of the people who fell to the ground at that precise moment was the victim of a gunshot. As we saw on a live video from Sputnik, a first man got up quickly, telling the journalist that he had been hit on the wrist by a baton and had lost his watch. "They charged us," he says, while another is filmed sitting on the sidewalk, with a large cut on the skull. "It doesn't matter," we can hear him whisper, still shocked.
In search of a potential victim
An older man, around fifty, remains taped to the asphalt for several tens of seconds. “He was knocked out, says one of the four street medics who evacuated him on a perpendicular street. We cleaned and disinfected his wound and he left. He didn't want a bandage, he wanted to remain discreet, I think. ” His comrade goes on: “He was tottering severely and probably had a concussion. But it was not a LBD shot […] There is a good chance that this shot went into a vacuum, ”he believes, before evoking the trail of a fourth man“ severely hit on the back , supported by another team ".
Laurent Bigot, the author of the viral video, also does not rule out any hypothesis, in particular that of an “accidental shot”. The consequences of a possible LBD shot therefore remain very unclear. The prefecture also insisted on having identified Friday afternoon "no complaint for shooting LBD".
There remains however a thorny question in this file: the legitimacy of this supposed shooting. According to an IGPN official, it all depends on "threat assessment". For each shot, a report is written to detail the circumstances.
Questioned in April by the UN, France had recognized that this weapon was "likely to cause significant injuries if the shot reaches people located less than 3 or 10 meters away". This Thursday afternoon, this distance could have been further reduced.