"
Dangerous
" temptation of face-to-face, lower tolerance than before to disorder: the Defender of Rights scrutinizes, in a study published Monday, November 29, the challenges encountered by the police in France, questioning their “
confrontational vision
” and instead setting up Belgian tactics as a model.
Read also Dams, shots at the police ... The West Indies in the cyclone of violence
This study, entitled “
De-escalation of violence and management of protesting crowds. What articulation (s) in France and in Europe today?
», Is the result of analyzes carried out since 2018 by the independent State institution and interviews with police and gendarmes. It then appears that a new national law enforcement plan announced in mid-September by Emmanuel Macron and supposed, among other things, to devote the place and role of journalists during demonstrations is expected.
The study underlines how much the question of maintaining order has become particularly thorny since 2016 and the demonstrations against the labor law, and especially since the movement of "
yellow vests
" in 2018-2019, punctuated by violence and injuries due to the use of defense ball launchers (LBD) by the police.
She notes that the police in France seem "
strongly marked by a confrontational prism
" and inclined to apply the law with a "
mainly punitive approach
".
"Tension" and "hypermediatisation"
The study echoes the "
stress developed
" by the police with "
contemporary hypermedia
" which "
maintains collective mobilization
" and encourages "
the politician to get involved in the conduct of operations
" which reduces, according to them, the time of the police response. A "
tension
" born of "
the massive distribution of smartphones
" which tends to blur the distinctions between onlookers, journalists, militant media, as many "
third party observers
" in the midst of the demonstrators who constitute, according to the police, "
a harmful problem
" for his maneuvers.
In the national plan for maintaining order (SNMO), the institution of the Defender of Rights points to a "
dichotomy
" between the management of "
peaceful demonstrations
" and that "
very reactive or even brutal
" of "
disorders
" which contrasts with the practices of neighboring countries. According to her, the Belgian approach to maintaining order, "
entirely based on the principle of de-escalation
", is seen as a model on a European scale. It revolves around the concepts of dialogue and consultation.
The new SNMO was due to be presented before November.
On June 10, the Council of State inflicted a disavowal on Gérald Darmanin by canceling several provisions of his SNMO, presented in September 2020, including the technique of "
the net
" - which consists of surrounding the demonstrators and keeping them in a perimeter given - as presented by Gérald Darmanin, and the obligation for journalists to leave the scene when the demonstrations are dispersed.
