The Versailles Criminal Court (Yvelines) is due to examine this Thursday afternoon a fairly emblematic case of the issue of the slippages of the police which has fueled the public debate in recent months.
A 33-year-old police officer is on trial for having hit a young man in handcuffs during an arrest in Chanteloup-les-Vignes (Yvelines) in 2015 and for having fired his flash ball at a passer-by who was peacefully protesting against this brutality.
These alleged illegitimate violence did not result in any total incapacity for work (ITT) for the victims, despite the wounds noted in the first (scalp, root of the nose, lip) as well as a maxillofacial trauma.
As for the second, his build and his wallet luckily protected him from the projectile.
Under judicial supervision, the same peacekeeper appears, along with three colleagues, also for forgery and use.
They are suspected of having knowingly omitted to mention elements in the surveillance and arrest report, and thus altered the reality of the facts.
"In other words, they covered each other," said Jean-David Scemama, lawyer for the plaintiff, now 29 years old.
Hostile context?
On October 23, 2015, the Versailles prosecutor's office entrusted an investigation to the IGPN after the broadcast on social networks of an amateur video.
This document shows an undercover policeman beating a man on the ground.
The facts, filmed from her window by a local resident alerted by noises, took place on October 16 during an anti-drug operation by the anti-crime squad in the sensitive city of Noé in Chanteloup.
That day, a team from the local BAC supervises a room containing cannabis and ends up arresting B., a young man presented by the arrest report as having fled when he saw the police, beating his pursuers, and continued to brutally resist his arrest, in particular by playing "dead".
This same report describes a context hostile to this interpellation, justifying the use of the flash-ball by the peacekeeper in front of a group of verbally aggressive individuals, one of whom was about to throw a stone.
In police custody, B. denies the police charges.
Already known to justice, he will be sentenced on November 25, 2015 to 1 year in prison for use and possession of narcotics and rebellion (in recidivism), and violence.
"A conviction on the basis of a report whose authors are five years later prosecuted for forgery," laments Me Scemama.
The IGPN investigations, in front of which B. explained that he saw a man run towards him without knowing that he was a police officer and then being beaten afterwards, will undermine the version of the BAC men.
"It was really violent, when I think about it, I tremble"
At the end of his investigation, the judge considered that it resulted from numerous testimonies - coming from people who sometimes did not know B. - that the latter was the victim of violence by the peacekeeper when he was already restrained, handcuffed and that he offered no further resistance.
“It was really violent;
when I think about it I tremble […] I do not criticize the work of the police officers but if they want to stop someone, there are many of them, they can catch him without being violent like that ”, will indicate the one of the witnesses.
In defense of the police officer, experienced and known for his composure, the magistrate underlines the absence of ITT noted by the doctor and the climate of the arrest - a flagrante delicto in a difficult neighborhood - not facilitating its accomplishment in calm.
This context, the members of the BAC, it seems, blackened it.
The judge considers, in fact, that the passer-by targeted by the flash-ball did not constitute a danger and that no hostile group surrounded him, contrary to the statements of the peacekeeper.
The incriminated report, where it is even a question of a group of individuals running towards the police, shouting "We are going to smoke you", therefore "disguised the context of the intervention", according to the magistrate.
He noted, however, that the circumstances of the arrest made it difficult to assess and calmly retain all the elements.
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Still, the four police officers, who denied the facts during the investigation, were referred to the criminal court.
Asked this Wednesday, their lawyer did not follow up.
Me Scemama, him, waits for the court to prove this time right to his client, "inserted and today building guard".
