The General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN) has proposed to refer to the disciplinary board three Brav-M police officers who had threatened and humiliated young people arrested in Paris at the end of March. The police also require four others to be punished with a warning, AFP learned on Tuesday from sources familiar with the matter.
The civil servants were accused of one or more breaches, including the duty to set an example, the obligation of courtesy towards the public, damage to the credit of the national police and the duty to protect the person arrested, detailed these sources. These conclusions of the administrative investigation of the IGPN are not a surprise, its boss Agnès Thibault-Lecuivre had announced that her services were going to “propose sanctions”. At the end of March, a few days after the revelation of this recording, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, had affirmed that there would “obviously” be sanctions against the police.
Simple warning or disciplinary advice
It is now up to the prefect of police Laurent Nuñez, who declared Tuesday evening on BFMTV not to have yet received these recommendations, to decide, either by validating them, or by revising them upwards or downwards. The warning is a disciplinary sanction of the first group, the lowest in the public service, and is not the subject of any mention in the file of the agent.
In the event of referral to a disciplinary board, the police potentially incur heavier penalties, from temporary exclusion for one day to dismissal, which is much rarer.
Registered threats
On the night of March 20 to 21, members of the Brav-M (Brigade for the repression of violent motorized actions) arrested seven young demonstrators, suspected of having taken part in degradations in a wild procession in the center of Paris. One of the arrested had then discreetly recorded the exchanges with the police.
“The next time we come, you won’t get on the bus to go to the police station, you’ll get on something else called an ambulance to go to the hospital”, threatens a police officer in particular towards a Chadian student, Souleyman Adoum Souleyman, particularly targeted by officials in the recording.
In reports to their hierarchy of Brav-M agents who intervened on the evening of the facts, obtained by AFP, they pleaded “physical and moral fatigue”. A brigadier had thus described “shifts of 14 hours, even 16 hours” during which, he said, “our basic and vital needs were not respected, hydrating and eating were very complicated”. A judicial investigation, also entrusted to the IGPN, is still underway in this case.