Victim of asphyxia with fractured larynx. And a ventral veneer? The conditions under which Cédric Chouviat, a 42-year-old delivery man, died on Friday are starting to clear up. According to the first elements, the father of the family underwent a ventral plating at the time of his arrest. While the investigation will have to determine whether the police intervention is linked to his death or not, the techniques used to immobilize him are already pointed out by his relatives.
"There is no doubt that the modalities of his arrest - the key, the belly button, choking - were inappropriate and out of proportion," said Tuesday William Bourdon, one of the lawyers for the family. Also accused of causing the death of Adama Traoré, a 24-year-old young man who died in July 2016 during a police arrest in Beaumont-sur-Oise (Val-d'Oise), ventral plating is one of the techniques used by the police to immobilize.
“The prone technique (the other name for ventral plating, editor's note ) consists in pressing down and keeping a person belly on the ground, head turned to the side. The police sometimes add to this position other means of restraint, such as the handcuffing of the wrists behind the back and the immobilization of the ankles ", according to the definition of ACAT, the Action of Christians for the abolition of torture, which for years has denounced this practice.
Filmed struggling, then inert
In 2016, this NGO published a detailed report on the issue of police violence, pointing, among other things, to the ventral plating, which it claimed was responsible for several deaths in recent years. "Because of the position thus imposed on the person, this technique strongly hinders respiratory movements and can cause positional asphyxia," said ACAT.
In addition, staying on the ground would cause agitation for the arrested, continues the NGO. A reaction that is reminiscent of that of Cédric Chouviat, filmed by witnesses, on his stomach, still struggling helmeted under the weight of three police officers, then inert on other images.
"Faced with this unrest, a law enforcement officer will tend to exert additional pressure or compression in order to control the person, further compromising their breathing possibilities", Amnesty International pointed out in 2001.
Prohibited in Switzerland and Belgium
A hypothesis confirmed by a retired medical expert interviewed by Le Parisien. "To cause such a result, the police officer (s) necessarily exerted a prolonged and very strong pressure with two support points, in front on the Adam's apple and from behind in the upper back," says T -he.
Prohibited in Switzerland and in Belgium, the ventral plating was also abandoned by the police of New York and Los Angeles. In France, according to ACAT, this technique has been supervised, without however being prohibited.
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"When the immobilization of a person is necessary, the compression - especially when it is exerted on the thorax or the abdomen - must be as momentary as possible and released as soon as the person is hampered by the regulatory means" , explained a note from the Directorate General of the National Police (DGPN) written in 2008.
"We will study the question of suspending this technique"
"In 2016, the DGPN had told us that it had launched a reflection on the tackle, which means that there are alternatives, but since there has been nothing new," says Parisian Marion Guémas, responsible ACAT police justice program and advocacy. Contacted by Le Parisien, the DGPN had not yet responded to our requests.
"We will study the conditions of this intervention and we will draw all the technical conclusions that are necessary," said Interior Minister Christophe Castaner. "If it is established that a technique, whatever it is, and I am not in the affirmative, can generate the death of a man, obviously we will study the question of suspending this technique", a -he rocks.
VIDEO. Death of Cédric Chouviat: images of his arrest
