At the Congress of Mayors,
In a small room at the Parc des Expositions, around twenty elected officials took their places. Facing them, leader Antoine, of the GIGN national negotiation unit. The soldier is an expert at parleying with madmen, hostage-takers or suicidal people. This Thursday morning, he came to present, at the annual congress of the Association of Mayors of France (AMF), the “peaceful management of incivility” training, set up by the national gendarmerie in February 2021.
Objective: “to give mayors simple tools and allow them to acquire reflexes to de-dramatize a situation, and thus avoid an escalation,” explains the gendarme. Elected officials who follow this training, he says, learn “to calm a situation through simple active listening and communication techniques.”
The subject is at the heart of the concerns of the participants in this event, whose theme this year is “Communities attacked, Republic threatened”. It must be said that attacks – mainly verbal – against elected officials jumped by 30% last year and are expected to increase again by 15% this year, according to the Ministry of the Interior.
Mayor of Nouans, in Sarthe, for twenty-two years, Claude Morin believes that “incivility has been increasing for five years”. “At the time, when I introduced myself, I didn’t think about that at all. But things have changed, and I think future candidates will have that in mind. Some will perhaps give up because they will be afraid,” fears the councilor. According to him, this training provided by gendarmerie negotiators is “indispensable”, particularly “for young mayors who find themselves confronted with much more serious situations than before”. “We didn’t really need that. »
“Today, social tension is everywhere”
Mayor of Vauthiermont (Territoire de Belfort) for three years, Alexandre Mançanet has been the victim of incivility three times. “Our daily life involves dealing with conflicts which, at the start, are nothing and which can become important,” he says. “Neighborhood problems”, “logging which can cause problems”… “Today, social tension is everywhere, even in small villages. I had my car scratched, insulted, outraged. One resident even dropped his pants in front of me. It’s not serious on a physical level, obviously, but morally, it’s complicated to live with. » He considers this situation “serious” which forces “elected officials to request training to know the correct behavior to adopt when faced with attackers”.
For an hour, Chief Antoine, assisted by two regional gendarmerie negotiators, provided some tips and techniques for defusing conflicts. We must first analyze the situation. If they do not feel like intervening alone, elected officials must inform the police, he insists. Otherwise, they must learn to listen to the people in front of them, identify a privileged interlocutor, make them understand that they have understood their requests. You have to adapt the tone of voice, use the right vocabulary, stand at the right distance. “These are not miraculous solutions, but they can help us in many cases,” appreciates Claude Morin.
22,000 mayors already trained
Since its launch two years ago, 22,000 mayors out of 33,000 who are in gendarmerie zones, mainly in rural areas, have followed this training which normally lasts nearly 4 hours. “Often, elected officials want to redo it and pass it on to town hall staff or their deputies,” observes Chef Antoine. Most of the people present this morning intend to follow this training when they return to their community.