They consider themselves "dropped" by the first cop in France. After interior minister Christophe Castaner's announcements on police violence, anger is still raging in the police ranks, even after several meetings organized between the unions and Beauvau. Thursday evening, some demonstrated it by videos and photos of them throwing their handcuffs on the ground in protest, taken in Bordeaux, Toulouse, Lyon, Nice or Roubaix.
Handcuffs ashore, police united to protest the decision of @CCastaner @alliance #toulouse #police pic.twitter.com/u2oonecHOp
- Anthony Vella (@antho_vella) June 11, 2020“The cops in France no longer consider Christophe Castaner as the supposed first cop in France. He let us go on Monday, threw us out for food on Monday. It's up to him to regain Everest's confidence, ”thundered Yves Lefebvre, secretary general of the SGP Police Unit, who was able to meet the minister on Thursday. He also called on his colleagues "not to question, to stop intervening".
The object of their anger? The Minister's proposed ban on the use of the "throttling key" as a technique of arrest. "We do this after a police officer killed a man by suffocating him with one knee on the ground. His death is very regrettable and condemnable, but this practice made by an American police officer on an American citizen, it has nothing to do with France ", annoys a Parisian peacekeeper, who worries, with this ban, to no longer have means of intervention. And castigates the approach of a government which "passes the ointment to a minority in the street, to the detriment of all the national police", tainted by these accusations of racism.
"We become dirty, infrequent"
Beyond Christophe Castaner, it is indeed a whole government - including the presidency - which is the target of anger. “This government has no backbone. It is enough that he has 20,000 excited in the street for him to let go of the police, ”judges an officer of the Paris judicial police, who says he is disgusted. "In December 2018, at the height of the Yellow Vests crisis, when they trembled in their palaces, Macron, Castaner, and all their cliques caressed us in the direction of the hair. But now that all the youth are pointing their fingers at us, we become dirty, infrequent ”, he gets annoyed.
An opinion shared by Fabien Vanhemelryck, general secretary of the Alliance union: “A Minister of the Interior must be behind his police. The minister is out of the picture, but the President of the Republic is just as much, ”he criticizes. "We have total confidence in the police, but also a great requirement for them," reacted, for its part, government spokesperson Sibeth Ndiaye on France Info.
The drop in morale is such that the Paris Prefect and the Director of the National Police have sent letters of support to their troops. "Do not doubt the Republic", "do not doubt the national police", "do not doubt your police bosses", "do not doubt you", wrote the prefect Didier Lallement.