After the death of Nahel, 17, killed by police fire after refusing to comply in Nanterre, a figure was again put forward. “Only 1% of the police draw their weapon when they refuse to comply”, indicated in his column a journalist from France Inter June 28. This is an element already advanced in September, when a man was shot dead by the police after a roadside check on August 30 in Neuville-en-Ferrain in the North.
The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, had affirmed on CNews on September 1 that “police forces use their weapons in 0.5% of cases” for refusals to comply. And he specified, “the refusals to comply are increasing”, with one every half hour. This figure is correct (it’s 0.7%), but for the sociologist Sebastian Roché, a specialist in policies in the European Union, it is not the right denominator that is chosen.
27,206 refusals to comply recorded in 2021
According to the 2022 report of the National Interministerial Road Safety Observatory (Onisr), which relates to data from the previous year, 27,206 refusals to comply were recorded by the police and the gendarmerie in 2021. An increase of 2.4% compared to 2020 and 19.4% compared to 2017, indicates the balance sheet.
To calculate the rate of use of weapons, it is necessary to take into account the number of shots to immobilize a vehicle. The reports of the IGPN (general inspectorate of the national police) and the IGGN (the general inspectorate of the national gendarmerie) provide this information: in 2021, the national police fired 157 times, the gendarmerie 44 times (by accumulating the cases of use of firearms during attacks with a vehicle used as a weapon by destination and to immobilize these vehicles). Police and gendarmerie therefore used their weapon in 0.73% of cases that year.
“You don’t draw your gun every time there is a refusal to comply”
But for Sebastian Roché, the language elements of the Ministry of the Interior can be “misleading”. “In cases where there is a refusal to comply, but which is not serious, there is no need to see if the police pull out their weapon”, he underlines to 20 minutes. This is why it is better to take as denominator the refusals that he calls “dangerous” or “serious”, that is to say with a danger to others.
“You don’t pull out your gun every time there is a refusal to comply,” he continues. Taking into account all refusals to comply has no meaning, it is a general value that is not linked to the use of the weapon. The question is how the police behave in situations where there is a danger”, explains the director of research at the CNRS, who insists on being “as precise as possible”.
This finer data is provided by Road Safety in the category “refusal by the driver to obey a summons to stop in circumstances exposing others to the risk of death or injury”. In 2021, 5,247 refusals of this type were recorded by the police, for 201 shootings, or in 3.8% of cases.
Police fired in 5.9% of cases of serious refusal to comply
Sebastian Roché refined his data to calculate the national police shooting rate, by cross-checking. In 2021, the last known year, 2,675 serious refusals were recorded by the national police, for 157 shootings, or “5.9% of cases, he concludes. It is a very substantial risk and not a marginal phenomenon. »
The figure given by Gérald Darmanin amounts to minimizing the phenomenon according to the sociologist. “It’s a bit like the ministry’s line of defense that says the police don’t shoot often,” he points out. Yes, in absolute terms, they don’t often shoot, but once again, we are not in absolute terms, we are talking about a specific situation, it is the serious refusal to comply. »
Thirteen fatal shootings in these situations in 2022
In a statistical study published last September, Sebastian Roché, with researchers Paul le Derff and Simon Varaine, demonstrated that fatal police shootings at moving vehicles increased fivefold between before and after the vote on the 2017 law, which amended the conditions under which the police opened fire. ” It seems that [cette] law has resulted in more frequent attacks on the lives of citizens by the police,” they conclude.
Over the past seven years, the annual reports of the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN) show a virtual stability in the number of shots directed at moving vehicles in cases of refusal to comply. The IGPN report for 2021 thus reports 137 shootings in 2016, 202 in 2017, 170 in 2018, 147 in 2019, 153 in 2020, 157 in 2021. In 2022, 138 shootings of this nature were recorded.
On the other hand, fatal shootings in comparable situations have increased from 2 in 2021 to 13 in 2022. While comparisons with neighboring countries are complicated, because the statistical categories are not the same, a single fatal shooting as a result of a refusal to comply has been recorded in ten years in Germany, recalls the sociologist.