The amateur video, posted on Twitter on Saturday evening, has been viewed more than 300,000 times. “A man and a woman were arrested by the police for not wearing masks! They had it in their hands, wanted to put it in view of the police ... There you go! " , comments the user who shared the images. We first see a woman standing there, wearing a mask, handcuffed by two policemen. A little further, the camera is focused on a man gesticulating as four police officers try to pin him to the ground. The camera then zooms in on the man's face, his forehead bloodied, exclaiming: "You have my identity, and you tell me that I did not comply? It really is a scandal! ”.
Shared nearly 2,000 times on Twitter, the video drew numerous outrageous comments. The scene obviously takes place in Nice during the Tour de France.
"Even for an arrest of robbers or dangerous pimps that I have been given to lead in France over the past 10 years, I have never witnessed this deployment of violence!" , thus indignant the former magistrate Albert Lévy.
"These policemen are sick!" , reacted for his part the former adviser of Paris Yves Pozzo di Borgo.
But what exactly happened? Are these images reliable? Apparently, they were captured by the cell phone of a passer-by on Saturday, August 29, during the Tour-de-France in the city of Angels. The Nice Matin newspaper was able to obtain the official version of the communication unit of the departmental public security directorate (DDSP) of the Alpes-Maritimes.
According to the DDSP des Alpes-Maritimes, while police officers were carrying out a security patrol, they saw a couple whose man was not wearing a protective mask. According to Nice Matin , one of the police officers then asked him to put on his mask. The person concerned would have said not to have or not to want to wear it - "the situation, on this point, is not clear" , admits the local newspaper. However, the video shows that a mask is hanging from the man's ear.
An agent then explains to him that a verbalization is planned. The man provides an identity document, and the report of 135 euros is drawn up. It was at this moment that the situation would have escalated: his companion loses his temper, judging the attitude of the police to be inappropriate, and lowers her mask, letting her anger burst. The police then demanded her identity document and alerted her: she risked, in turn, a ticket. Still according to Nice Matin , based on the information given by the DDSP of the Alpes-Maritimes, the man would then have become angry in his turn, pushing an agent away by the arm. It was at this point that he found himself on the ground and then handcuffed.
The couple were then taken to the Auvare barracks before being presented to a judicial police officer, the local daily said. However, the conditions under which the man was wounded at the front were not specified. Nice Matin specifies that an “investigation is open” and that the “prosecutor's office is notified” .