Sentenced in January 2021 to 10 months suspended prison sentence for brandishing his weapon in front of a detainee in a cell at the Aix-en-Provence remand center, a Marseille police officer was finally released by the court of appeal , we learned Wednesday from a judicial source.
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The facts took place on September 22, 2020 following a transfer of three detainees from the jails of the Marseille courthouse to the Aix remand center in Luynes. One of the passengers in the van had been particularly virulent against the police officers of the Guard Unit and the judicial transfers, repeatedly spitting in the face of one of them.
Arrived at Luynes, while the detainee was increasing his death threats - "
I'm going to make you lose weight, dirty pig with my kalach
" -, the policeman who was coming back from the toilets where he had cleaned the sputum, turned around in front of the cell where The detainee had been placed, drew his weapon and aimed it, arm outstretched towards the cell, finger on the trigger guard and not on the trigger tail.
He sheathed it very quickly, still under the insults of the inmate.
A prison warden had heard the policeman say: "
I would give him two
."
Others report the words of the overexcited inmate: "
You have a gun, you don't have the balls to take it out
".
"
Ride like a motherfucker!"
"
"
However blameworthy it may be at the moral level, the act accused of the police officer cannot characterize the offense of violence with a weapon by a person holding public authority
", writes the Court of Appeal in its judgment rendered on December 7, thus invalidating the analysis of the Marseilles Criminal Court. The court observed that the police officer did not look at the detainee when he aimed his weapon at his cell and that "
this furtive gesture is far from having created a strong impression on the detainee who, on the contrary, redoubled his provocations
". The court of appeal confirmed the acquittal on other facts, which the criminal court had already pronounced.
Initially, the police officer and the driver of the cellar van were prosecuted for violence committed against the detainees being transported by deliberately driving very fast and braking inadvertently.
One of the detainees had heard the policeman say to his colleague: "
Ride like a motherfucker!"
".
"
There is no proof that the defendants who were keen to finish their mission as soon as possible, have voluntarily heard acts of violence on the detainees
", one reads in the judgment of the court.
Assigned to another service a few months before his first trial, the police officer finally cleared of all charges, had been suspended with reduced salary.
