A 180 degree turn. Confronted with evidence of police brutality, the President of the Republic and the government bent their speech. Until very recently, the executive gave the feeling of unreservedly supporting the police in the face of criticism.
During a trip to Pau (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), the head of state on Tuesday stigmatized "behaviors that are not acceptable" and demanded "clear proposals to improve ethics". "When the police or the gendarmes leave their intervention framework and do not respect the ethical rules [...], it is a professional misconduct", he estimated this Wednesday on the sidelines of his wishes to the hurry.
VIDEO. "There was a LBD shot at point blank range"
This inflection echoes the news: the death of a 42-year-old delivery driver during a stormy control in Paris, the beating of an Unsa unionist, point-blank shooting of a defense ball launcher, and launch of judicial inquiries in the process.
She intervenes while the fear of the government to be carried away by an insurrectionary crisis, palpable during the first two weekends of December 2018, has lost its consistency: the police have regained ground so that the executive seems today now less inclined to forgive slippages.
"Free violence that saps the credit of the police"
And there is the famous Toulouse leg-hook. This trepidation of a policeman to a young demonstrator, scene widely relayed on social networks, finished convincing the high authorities of the Ministry of the Interior that it was necessary to harden the tone. "This gesture could appear minor because less dangerous than others and yet it had a considerable impact, including internally," admits a manager at Place Beauvau. And to evoke a "gratuitous violence which undermines the credit of the police".
During his vows Monday, Christophe Castaner cold picked his troops: he recalled the necessary "exemplarity" of officials and called for a "fair and proportionate use of force".
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In the Interior, however, any change of course is challenged: "One injured person is one too many injured and the speech has never varied, if there is a fault, there will be a penalty. "It's the context that has changed," says one in the entourage of Christophe Castaner. We are in a calmer period of more controlled policing. The resonance is stronger and the message carried is therefore more audible. "
Disgruntled peacekeepers' unions
However, the high police hierarchy, like those responsible for the IGPN, the "police police" responsible for investigations, always refute the term "police violence". "I do not like the term," said Emmanuel Macron in his vows, because, according to him, the formula induces the idea "of a camp against a camp". However, he said, "the police are not a camp" but "people who are committed [...] to protect you and ensure respect for public order and the laws of the Republic".
Faced with these calls to order, the powerful peacekeepers' unions, who have just lost one of their own in an intervention in the Rhône, make known their dissatisfaction. Thus, Frédéric Lagache, delegate of Alliance, refers the responsibility for this tension over justice: “Today we free ourselves from the authority of the police. This is the sad result of a situation which finds its cause in the absence of a criminal response and which will only get worse if the Minister of Justice continues to ignore us! "
The hierarchy, through the voice of the Union of Commissioners of the National Police (SCPN) calls for distinguishing itself more clearly from individual abuses. According to David Le Bars, its secretary general, "the inflection seems conspicuous because the minister always refused to take provisional measures of suspension against police officers in question, even when the images were implacable as for the shooting in the back of the demonstrator in Bordeaux or the police commander in Toulon hitting two demonstrators on the sidelines of a demonstration. "This political choice," he continues, "has led to a feeling of impunity. The government must restore balance after a catastrophic start to the year in terms of dramatic intensity. "