After the arrest, the control. An investigation was entrusted to an ethics service to assess the behavior of the police during an arrest in the Hauts-de-Seine on Saturday, the video of which has since accumulated more than a million views on X, according to the Nanterre prosecutor’s office requested by AFP on Monday.
The Hauts-de-Seine prefecture had indicated on Sunday that the man arrested had “refused to comply, burned a fire and then hit a police car”. An investigation was then opened “on facts of refusal to comply and other traffic offenses that occurred” on Saturday “around 8 p.m.” in the municipalities of Bagneux and Fontenay-aux-Roses, specified the prosecution, according to which “the elements known in the state of the investigation report a journey during which there is percussion with a police vehicle”.
On the viral video of the arrest, a car topped with a flashing light hits a man in shorts and a t-shirt. Two other men, in police uniforms and in civilian clothes, rush at him as he gets up, knock him down and immobilize him, face against the pavement. The uniformed man raises his arm, as if to strike, as the video ends.
A chase after a refusal to comply
“Following the will expressed by the family to file a complaint against the police, an investigation was entrusted (…) to the Ethics, Synthesis and Evaluation Service (SDSE)”, specified the prosecution, adding that this service “will carry out its investigations independently to verify the existence or not of offenses likely to be attributed to the police”.
The arrested man was traveling in “a car”, noted the public prosecutor, and not on a two-wheeler as initially indicated by the prefecture. His physical examination at the hospital had “described superficial lesions”, assured the prosecution.
Then his police custody had “been lifted in view of the psychiatric expertise” and he had been taken by the firefighters to the hospital “for his compulsory hospitalization”, added the same source. But “despite the expertise concluding that immediate care was needed in the context of imminent danger, the hospital did not admit the person concerned, who was handed over to his family,” said the public prosecutor.