He hung up the gloves, but has never been more popular with his hundreds of thousands of fans. Patrice Quarteron, 41, heavyweight in Thai kickboxing and boxing rings, has made social media his new playground. Spokesman for the suburbs, the colossus (1.98 m and 120 kg) who played the role of a bodyguard in the series "the Office of legends" (Canal +) knew the terrorist Amedy Coulibaly in his district of Grande-Borne, in Grigny (Essonne).
Since 2015, and the Charlie Hebdo attack, his patriotic positions have earned him threats on the Internet. But Patrice Quarteron hardly cares. He has just castigated "general indifference" in the face of the death of the gendarme Mélanie Lemée, mown by a driver in the Lot-et-Garonne. Remarks worth in particular to him to be applauded by the French extreme right.
What shocked you about the death of Mélanie Lemée?
PATRICE QUARTERON. Were there riots because Yassine ( note: the first name of the alleged murderer ) murdered a gendarme? If the police had shot Yassine, people would have said: "They killed Yassine", there would have been frescoes with his name, "Yassine for life". When we talk about an offender! A guy who forced a dam and forces a second one. If the gendarme had shot him, which I would have done, today there would have been monster demonstrations. When there is a police check, I'm sorry, but we stop.
VIDEO. Constable killed near Agen: the driver "faces life imprisonment"
You grew up in a city classified as a republican reconquest district and you spend your time denouncing the "scum". Why ?
I was a controller for more than five years, I saw the increase in violence in transport, that's why I stopped. We were destitute, we had no means to defend ourselves. And today Philippe, a bus driver ( Editor's note: this 58-year-old man who died from an ultraviolet attack in Bayonne ), is killed because he asks clients to put on a mask. I know this mentality which means that a white man, in the head of some people, has no right to give orders. He must not say anything, otherwise he will be massacred. Anti-white racism exists. I was formatted with this hatred of France by some in my youth, I know what I am talking about. Fortunately, I made it through boxing and I realized that it was great no matter what.
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Your positions go the opposite of those of the singer Camélia Jordana.
Camélia Jordana's remarks are scandalous and untrue. This petty bourgeois was enrolled in piano lessons in a large high school and she comes to talk about the city? I lived thirty-three years in one of the poorest cities in France. I was at the heart of the field and I never saw honest workers being attacked by the police or being afraid of the police. Quite the contrary. And honest people are sick of being abandoned in these cities at the mercy of dealers and delinquency. I cannot stand these people who use the misery that I have known for their business when they know absolutely nothing about it.
VIDEO. Quarteron: "After the attacks of 2015, I could not be silent ..."
We feel uplifted…
Look, for Bayonne or the gendarme Mélanie. I was shocked by the silence of all these committed artists: Omar Sy, Yannick Noah, Camélia Jordana. They are always united when it concerns a young black or Arab. But you never hear them when a white man is killed cowardly and for free even when he was only doing his job. Indignation should not be a matter of skin color.
Why do you systematically defend the police?
I absolutely do not systematically support the police, moreover I had very critical comments on certain aspects of their profession: their inaction in the face of real delinquency in particular.
How do you also situate yourself in relation to the current debate on racism in France?
Black Lives Matter, that has no interest… The problem is not racism in the police force, it is education, the rate of school failure. One in two young people from the neighborhoods leaves without a diploma. In 6th grade, the level is worrying, the young people of the cities are sometimes two years behind. This is where we have to put the package. The problem is not discrimination or racism. We just need to give more means to allow people to get out of it and become a doctor, lawyer or professor.
Your opinion does not please everyone, and you deserve to be insulted on the Web…
There are the happy and the unhappy about what I say. But those who are anti-French, anti-Charlie, who will speak on behalf of the suburbs without having lived there, are not legitimate. I don't care if it likes it or not. Besides, if I cared, I wouldn't have been the first known guy from the suburbs to say "I'm Charlie." But I also know that many people thank me for saying what they dare not say. It is a minority in the cities which does not agree with me. As for threats on networks, it exists. But I'm waiting for someone to come and tell me the opposite.
