French police show their political influence on the street

French law enforcement agencies have become a centerpiece on the political chessboard within a year of the presidential election.

Thousands of policemen demonstrated this Wednesday before the National Assembly, seat of popular sovereignty, to honor recently assassinated officials and demand harsher penalties for the aggressors.

It is not the first time that the agents have protested, but it is the first time that a member of the Government, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, has joined the demonstration.

“I have simply come to support the police.

It is normal, they have a difficult time, they are in mourning ”, he justified.

"A minister of the Interior protesting against the government's policy is something unprecedented," says by telephone the political scientist Sebastian Roché, author of the book

. Roché maintains that, one year after the elections, with the pandemic economic crisis and the terrorist threat, the government's margin to act is narrow, and that is why it needs to demonstrate its support by attending the event. "The reason for the presence of the minister," he explains, "is the weakness of the government."

The protest was also attended by politicians from other parties, from the moderate left to the extreme right, who hope to profit from the unrest among policemen and gendarmes who consider themselves victims twice. First, because they feel overexposed to both Islamist terrorism and violent crime. And second, because they believe that they are stigmatized without reason when they are attacked by police violence in demonstrations in recent years.

The immediate origin of the demonstration on Wednesday is the death by three shots of agent Eric Masson during an identity check of suspected drug traffickers in Avignon, in the south of France.

The murder of Masson, 36, fueled the caricature, in the political and media debate, of France as a violent country where impunity reigns and on the brink of civil conflict.

The Avignon attack was the last straw for the police, two weeks after an unarmed civil servant, Stéphanie Monfermé, was stabbed to death by an Islamist in Rambouillet, near Paris.

The April 17 acquittal of eight of the 13 defendants for attempting to burn police officers alive on the outskirts of the capital in 2016 added to the outrage.

"We must send a message to criminals and criminals: if they touch a policeman, they run the risk of spending long years in prison," declared Marine Le Pen, candidate for the presidency for the far-right party National Regrouping from Bordeaux, where he visited a police station. A recent poll indicates that 74% of police officers will vote for Le Pen if he qualifies for the second round of presidential elections in 2022.