Julie
(first name has been changed)
initially thought she was dreaming.
Six o'clock strikes, this Tuesday morning in early May.
In a quiet building of red stones in Bondy in Seine-Saint-Denis, the tenants are still sleeping.
In half-sleep, the 35-year-old hears noises as if "people were fighting on the landing".
The screams are getting closer.
Julie opens her eyes, hidden under her duvet.
In the embrasure of his door, three police officers point weapons and flashlights at his face.
They scream, "Where is he?"
"
The cat takes refuge under the mattress.
Julie stammers.
“I put on some pants and walked out into my living room.
The agents understand that they have the wrong apartment and rush, ram ahead, to the apartment opposite.
From her living room, Julie observes the scene, trembling.
“One of them told me to calm down.
I was breathing hard.
You are never prepared for a revival like this.
"
She receives other testimonials via Twitter
The operation ends. The wanted man is not in the building. Before leaving, a policewoman notes the identities of Julie and her roommate. She scribbles the name of a police department and a cell phone number on a piece of paper folded in half. “She told me to call for door repairs. The hinges jumped under the weight of the ram. Four days later, the traces of paint at the foot of the armored door and the metal plate warped around the lock testify to the violence of the shock.
It is still early when the brigade leaves the building.
Julie goes back to bed.
Impossible to sleep.
“I wanted to tell it.
It was for me a way to evacuate the thing.
8:04 am.
She opens her Twitter profile and taps: “So this morning at 6 am I was woken up by the police who hammered down my door and held me up with guns.
She unfolds her story tweets by tweets.
His writings are loved and shared thousands of times.
“It took on a disproportionate scale.
"
So this morning at 6 am I was woken up by the police who hammered down my door and held me up with weapons.
- 🌱📸 Noah 🧻 (@wheeconfetti) May 4, 2021
Several kilometers away, Léa
(the first name has been changed)
reads this story.
She is stung.
The thirty-something living in Nantes was also the victim of an error a month earlier.
“It was violent.
I was pinned naked on my bed by a policeman.
They had come to look for my neighbor but they were wrong.
"
Under Julie's 240 characters, Léa replies: “Welcome to the club!
"I wanted to tell her that she was not alone," she says.
For several weeks, I didn't sleep well.
I was afraid someone would come home.
A few minutes later, Mathilda, 27, also grabs her phone and comments.
Seven years ago, in Nancy, the police were on the wrong floor in the early hours of the morning.
The dealer was above her house.
“Since then, I have never lived alone again.
"
Over 1,200 claims last year
Julie understands that her mishap has "already happened to other people."
" How ?
The Ministry of Justice has validated, since the beginning of the year, 590 requests for compensation for damage caused during a search error.
Last year, the Chancellery compensated 1,215 citizens.
They had nothing to be ashamed of, but when the police visit falls in the right place - which represents the vast majority of cases - the person targeted by the investigation or his relatives who hosted him are not entitled to any compensation.
These errors are "marginal", the police say, even if no state service keeps a precise count of the number of annual searches in France.
The Ministry of Justice thus indicates by email: “The acts of investigation carried out by the police and gendarmerie services (…) are not recorded in our criminal procedure software.
"
The metal plate warped around the lock still testifies to the violence of the impact of the ram used by the police.
DR
Julie, foreign to the investigation, intends to be the 591st request for reparation of the year.
It remains to find the right service.
Three hours after the mistake, his phone rings.
It was a police officer from the investigation service who carried out the search.
He advises him to contact his owner, his insurance and the litigation service of the court on which the case depends.
The exchange stops there.
“He doesn't have a number, he doesn't know exactly who is the person to reach, regrets Julie, big blue eyes and soft voice.
There, I feel that it will be long and complicated… ”
Not easy to find the compensation office!
She settles down at her desk and makes multiple calls.
“I wanted to understand the procedure and explain it to those who would find themselves in the same situation.
Julie is bored of ringtones and waiting music, tirelessly tells her story to everyone she meets on the phone.
Some interlocutors are incredulous.
"Are you sure it was the police?"
Slips one of them.
We advise him to file a complaint.
Then no.
“A complaint against the police?
It's not a good idea, ”another blurted out.
Two A4 sheets keep the recto / verso traces of this long day, stroll from administration to administration.
Julie discovers services that she had "never heard of before".
"Some victims have to let go long before me ..." she thinks.
To read also Val-de-Marne: the police forcefully break down the door of a septuagenarian, at 6 am
On Twitter, police officers noticed his story.
They give him advice by private message.
Among them, Christophe Korell, a former police officer very twittos, now seconded to the Ministry of Justice.
"It's rare to get the wrong apartment, but it can happen," said this former judicial police officer for fifteen years.
He remembers a mistake made a few years ago when dealing with terrorism cases.
“We were supposed to search an apartment.
We had a floor, a door, but when we got there, there were two buildings: one main and one at the back of the courtyard.
We had to go quickly and we got back to people who had nothing to do with the investigation.
They must have been terrified.
We apologized and left.
We must continue because there is an urgency that remains real.
"
Reverse Names on Mailboxes
In his career, he carried out around 200 searches. “We try to do all the possible checks before going, but sometimes it's complicated. It happens that the person to be stopped is passing through the building, that it is lodged with someone. We know she is in the building, we saw her come in but we don't know where she is going behind… And it is difficult to get inside upstream, it's too risky. "
He opens up to Julie.
“It felt good to understand how it worked.
All morning long, I had the feeling that the police could come into people's homes at random.
My home is supposed to be a refuge.
The same evening, the policeman who had helped her in the morning calls back to find out if she "has found the right service".
They discuss the morning mishap.
She regrets that "no one apologized".
After a day of research, Julie finally found the service to send her reimbursement request to.
DR
The agent understands and apologizes to him. “He also explained to me why they were wrong. In the lobby, the names on the letter boxes do not match the apartment numbers. I had already noticed that it was reversed but I never thought it would have a consequence one day. At the end of the exchange, Julie collapses with fatigue. “It clicked. I understood that the error was legitimate, that it was bad luck. "
Two days pass, without much progress. Julie calms the game on Twitter because she does not want to "scream at the blunder". His door still does not lock. That of his neighbor, not at all. After some research, Christophe Korell sends a contact to Julie. He directs him to the direction of judicial services at the Ministry of Justice. “Finally, I had found someone who understood my story. There, the aptly named "office of legal costs and expenditure optimization" will take his request.
Julie sends an email and a list of documents to her owner. It is he who will advance the costs. Will it be fully refunded? Not sure. "An obsolescence coefficient of 10% will be deducted from the total amount of the invoice produced", specifies the Ministry of Justice. For her part, Léa lost 300 euros in the affair; Mathilda, 600 euros ...
