A date for nothing.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin tried Thursday to defuse the hostility of the police to the reform of the judicial police by receiving their executives.
But his desire to maintain the heart of the project only strengthened it.
The reform of the PJ, tested in three then five new departments, must be generalized in 2023.
The project plans to place all the police services of a department (intelligence, public security, border police and judicial police) under the authority of a single departmental director of the national police, dependent on the prefect.
Currently, each service is accountable to its hierarchy.
Thursday, the Minister repeated his attachment to the departmental level and the creation of a single director for all police professions, which was felt by the participants as an end of inadmissibility.
" It is shameful "
The two parties have however agreed to a new meeting "in a month", according to the entourage of the Minister of the Interior and the participants, during which the leaders of the PJ will have to present proposals for amendment.
"It's shameful," protested a PJ investigator on condition of anonymity, pointing out that many proposals had already been made during the working groups on the reform.
“But all of them were rejected,” he recalled.
But for the police officers of the PJ, the departmental level does not make sense in terms of the fight against organized crime.
They fear a dilution of their specificity and the end of their independence vis-à-vis the administrative power.
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In August, they organized themselves to sound the alarm by creating an “apolitical” association “without union label”: the National Association of the Judicial Police.
“Disastrous consequences for the safety of citizens”
The police have since received the support of magistrates, starting with François Molins, one of the highest magistrates in the country.
On Wednesday, the latter said all the bad things he thought about a text which “is not going in the right direction” and will have “disastrous consequences for the security of citizens and the independence of justice”.
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On Thursday, the Prime Minister seemed to hear the anger of the PJ investigators.
“There are concerns that have been expressed, they will of course have to be addressed.
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"It's going to end very badly", predicts an investigator, for whom Gérald Darmanin "cannot imagine the extent of the discomfort".
“We are headed for disaster.
It would be better for him to say right away that we give up dealing with organized crime in this country”.
“Last bastion against the mafia”
A member of the association promises new mobilizations, platforms or petitions to make the minister understand that it is “not a slingshot” but “opposition, unease, great concern”.
“We are the last bulwark against the mafia,” he assures.
The boss of the police, Frédéric Veaux, who has spent his entire career in the PJ and is leading the reform, concentrates the harshest criticism.
Some denounce his “autism” on the file.
"It is logical that the PJ is worried and fights, for fear of being dissolved in the great whole of investigations into small offenses that are quick and profitable to elucidate", confides a source close to the government, "they must obtain guarantees.
If some participants in the meeting on Thursday preferred to nurture the hope that Gérald Darmanin would reconsider his positions, others did not believe it, because the reform has been “written for a long time”.
She was also strongly supported by Emmanuel Macron during his presidential campaign.