The family of Cédric Chouviat, who died following a police check in early January in Paris, asked Emmanuel Macron this Tuesday during a press conference to ban "the key to strangulation" and "ventral plating" , "techniques that kill".
"We do not understand why the throttling key was not prohibited," said Sophia Chouviat, the daughter of the victim, speaking "directly to Mr. Emmanuel Macron". "We know that these are the techniques that kill," added Arié Alimi, the family's lawyer, also asking for the end of the ventral tackle, another controversial arrest technique.
"Dozens of people [in] died. It is intolerable, "regretted the lawyer, calling for" to change the operating methods [of the police] when there is an identity check ".
"I'm suffocating"
On January 3, Cédric Chouviat, a 42-year-old father working as a delivery man, had suffered a heart attack near the Eiffel Tower after being tackled on the ground, helmet on his head, by three police officers at the end of a tense roadside check.
Transported in critical condition to the hospital, he died on January 5 as a result of asphyxia "with fracture of the larynx", according to the first elements of the autopsy communicated by the parquet floor of Paris, which had opened a judicial investigation for "manslaughter".
Cédric Chouviat said seven times that he was suffocating during the twenty seconds of his arrest by police officers now under threat of indictment, according to an expert report dated April 21, revealed by Le Monde and Mediapart.
"We are awaiting a response from the public authorities"
"We still do not understand why [the four police officers involved] have still not been suspended," said Sophia Chouviat, referring to her "feeling of fear and impunity". "We gave him no chance of survival," said the father of the victim. "We must help the police realize the value of life," added Doria Chouviat, the delivery man's widow. And Arié Alimi concludes: "there will be a judicial response, but we are also awaiting a response from the public authorities".
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The Minister of the Interior had announced following the death of George Floyd, a black man filmed being asphyxiated by a white police officer in the United States at the end of May, the imminent abandonment of the technique of so-called arrest "Choke key". But this controversial technique will continue "to be implemented" until a new mode of arrest is defined, then said the chief of the national police.