A police officer was referred Friday to the Paris criminal court for aggravated intentional violence in January 2020 in the capital, via non-regulatory LBD shooting against two anti-pension reform demonstrators, AFP learned Friday from a source close to the case.
A viral video, shot on January 9, 2020, showed a policeman on rue Saint-Lazare in Paris, armed with a self-defence bullet launcher (LBD), shooting into the crowd from about a meter away, knocking down a man.
Two shootings filmed
The police headquarters had mentioned a video that was “fragmented” and “taken out of context” and justified the use of “intermediate means, tear gas and LBD” against “violent people”.
A second video, shot six minutes later at the same location, showed the same police officer from the security and intervention companies (CSI) firing an LBD at a man, Peter B., located around ten meters away, before yelling, “Do you want more? “. Affected, this second protester had very quickly filed a complaint.
In one of the videos, the police officer’s RIO personal identification number, mandatory but not always displayed, was visible.
Shots “neither necessary nor proportionate”
Since 2020, a judicial investigation has been opened, the police officer, Ludovic C., indicted, and the first protester, Moukran S., has filed a civil action. On Friday, a Parisian investigating judge ordered the dismissal of Ludovic C., 35, for willful violence by a person holding public authority, with a weapon, resulting in total incapacity for work of less than eight days, out of the two demonstrators.
Regarding the violence committed on Moukran S., the Paris prosecutor’s office requested this referral to trial on July 20. On the other hand, he had requested a dismissal of the case concerning Peter B., calling into question the general “context” and the “behavior” of the demonstrator, making the shooting “necessary” and “proportionate”. In her order signed on Friday, of which AFP was aware, the investigating judge considers that the two shots were “neither necessary nor proportionate”.
Lawyers welcome
Me Alice Becker and her client Moukran S. “welcome that an independent judge recognizes the abusive use by a police officer of a weapon in the exercise of his duties in a context of maintaining order after all the classifications made by the prosecution and the IGPN as part of the yellow vest movement,” they told AFP.
Ludovic C.’s lawyer was unable to comment. His client, who raised a complaint against “death threats” against him, now officiates in the south of France.
“Many police officers will be sentenced to heavy sentences in the coming years,” predicted Me Arié Alimi, counsel to Peter B. “Justice will finally be able to act on the unprecedented brutalization of the maintenance of order and action police”, hopes the lawyer.