Investigation opened into suspicions of police violence at the Paris court

An investigation has been opened, in particular for violence by a person holding public authority and racist insults, after a report from the prefecture police on suspicion of police violence at the Paris judicial court filing, the prosecution said on Friday.

The preliminary investigation, which targets offenses of voluntary violence resulting in a total interruption of work (ITT) of less than 8 days in a meeting and forgery in an administrative document by a person holding public authority, and public insult due to the origin, ethnicity, nation or religion, was entrusted to the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN), said the prosecution.

The case, revealed by street press, was discovered in an incident on February 6, when a police officer, with a mark on his forehead, explained that he had been beaten by a person brought before the court but refused to file a complaint. His hierarchy then consulted the CCTV images. “What the cameras show goes beyond the simple ‘incident’,” writes street presswithout giving further details on the scene.

After receiving a hierarchical report evoking these facts, the police headquarters, which manages the court deposit, announced that it had sent a report to the prosecution and launched an internal administrative investigation.

The news site claims that violent behavior against detainees is “recurrent”, according to the hearing of a service official who allegedly designated “a handful of officials, who arrived at the night depot there about a year ago.”

An investigation closed without follow-up last year

Other officials would often film the monitor screens of CCTV cameras on which these behaviors appear, according to street press. The site produced a video, presented as being filmed at the court filing, in which a female police officer appeared to strike an individual being taken down a hallway.

In January 2022, the Paris prosecutor’s office dismissed an investigation opened in mid-2020 into mistreatment and racist remarks at the court filing, opened after the denunciation of a chief brigadier.

The testimony of the latter, Amar Benmohamed, had been revealed by street press. According to him, “more than a thousand defendants were mistreated” between March 2017 and mid-2019 at the depot. But the prosecution had estimated that “no element” allowed “to establish the phenomenon of mistreatment which was denounced”.

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