Pierre-Marie Sève is General Delegate of
the Institute for Justice
(IPJ), an association working for the reform of criminal justice in France.
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This Wednesday opens the annual national congress of firefighters in France.
On the program: practical workshops, conferences and even a potential visit from Gérald Darmanin, Minister of the Interior.
But it is above all a safe bet that a subject is coming back on everyone's lips… attacks by firefighters on duty.
Indeed, the phenomenon has been simmering for several years without any real national and media awareness.
The growing attacks are just starting to attract the attention of parliamentarians, with some voicing fears about worrying recruitment difficulties.
A large majority of firefighters who are victims of attacks no longer file a complaint, given the lack of a judicial response.
Pierre-Marie Sève
The statistics first confirm the scale of the phenomenon.
National statistics have existed since 2005, when the barracks have been required to report to the State the number of attacks against firefighters.
The figures are alarming: according to ONDRP, since 2008, the increase has been continuous, year after year.
Over the past ten years, the number of assaults has increased by 213%.
According to Senate report n ° 193 of December 2019, “
it is no longer just a question of contempt or verbal violence, but real ambushes: throwing stones, molotov cocktails or concrete blocks, attacks with weapons. white or even attacks and destruction of vehicles and emergency centers
”.
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In addition to this violence against firefighters, there is also violence against property: equipment, vehicles, barracks.
These assaults are almost as traumatic as the physical assaults for firefighters who have returned from intervention and who find their truck damaged or their rescue equipment stolen.
In recent years, trucks have even incorporated locked locks, which was unimaginable a short time ago for a profession accustomed to benevolence and social solidarity.
According to Senate report n ° 193 issued in December 2019, there are hundreds of reports of damaged trucks or stolen equipment every year.
On the last statistic made public, the increase was still 2% in one year.
Worse, these alarming statistics are however only partial since a large majority of firefighters victims of attacks no longer file a complaint, in the absence of a judicial response.
If the increase in violence against firefighters calls for solutions specific to this profession, it also stems from a larger problem: the chronic laxity of the justice system.
Pierre-Marie Sève
Unfortunately, this evolution in the number of attacks is not without impact on the level of service.
For several years, there has simply been a lack of firefighters in the barracks, and according to the Senate report, “
the increase in the number or the severity of violence seems to have an obvious impact on the vocation of firefighters (...) and is pushing also the firefighters already in exercise to consider their professional reconversion
”.
Indeed, how not to share a total incomprehension in front of the attacks of people who give of their free time to sometimes save the lives of their fellow citizens?
While the authority of the State goes downhill, violence against firefighters could be linked to the same phenomenon: the rejection of the State and the disintegration of the link between citizens, in other words, of the wildness.
But if the increase in violence against firefighters calls for solutions specific to this profession, it also stems from a larger problem: the chronic laxity of the justice system.
It must be repeated again and again: without a firm and dissuasive Justice, no phenomenon of violence or insecurity is called to decrease, on the contrary, it is a vicious circle.
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The reinstatement of minimum penalties, for example, is essential, because maximum penalties are hardly ever pronounced. But it is more broadly a penal revolution that must be put in place: without systematic instructions for prosecution by the prosecution, without the end of the ever-increasing number of sentence arrangements, without the construction of tens of thousands of prison places or without the reestablishment of real life imprisonment, violence in France, whether against firefighters or against citizens, can only continue its infernal course.
Beyond the recruitment difficulties, one can also imagine, reading various facts such as that in Toulouse, where real criminals had called the firefighters after hanging a gas canister in a burning trash can, that the murder of 'a firefighter can arrive any day.
We must act now, before it is too late.