Two municipal police officers, implicated in the accident of a scooter which left a seriously injured Monday evening following a refusal to comply in Bourges (Cher), were indicted Thursday for violence and complicity of violence, announced the city prosecutor's office.
The two officials were “placed under judicial supervision with in particular the ban on carrying out police and security activity, the ban on coming into contact with the co-perpetrator and the victims and the ban on holding a weapon,” said Bourges public prosecutor Céline Visiedo in a press release.
The scooter hit a tree
Monday, around 11:30 p.m., the municipal police tried to control two young people aged 20 and 22 who were riding a scooter without a helmet and without a license plate. “After a few swerves, the municipal police crew managed to get up to speed with the scooter, the passenger of the municipal police crew took out a tear gas canister which his fellow driver handed him and asked the driver to stop. He used tear gas in the direction of the scooter,” according to the magistrate.
The police then stopped their pursuit. Shortly afterwards, a local resident called emergency services on a road and the driver was found in critical condition, the scooter having struck a tree and an electricity pole.
The vital prognosis of the engaged driver
The driver's toxicological analyzes “highlighted the presence of a level of 1.62 g/l of alcohol in the blood as well as driving under the influence of narcotics. He was convicted twice for drug use,” according to the same press release. The young man’s vital prognosis “is still engaged”.
The passenger of the scooter was convicted several times, notably for refusing to comply, use and possession of drugs. According to the first elements of the investigation, there was no collision between the police vehicle and the scooter.
The police “indicated that they quickly stopped pursuing the scooter in accordance with the instructions given to them. They admit to having wrongly used the tear gas canister, interpreting a gesture from the scooter passenger as being threatening,” according to the prosecutor.
Road refusals to comply decreased slightly between 2016 and 2023, but the most serious acts are on the rise, according to the Ministry of the Interior, which published last week the first study on these offenses which have become a major issue for the law enforcement.