This is the story of a brigadier who only uses his baton for the theatre. Head of communication for the Bas-Rhin national police (at the DDSP 67), Joël Irion is a bit like the Swiss army knife of the police station. Since 1990, this 50-year-old has gone through the emergency police in Paris, the BAC in Strasbourg where he made a “very short” stay, the service of the Quarter (the equivalent of emergencies in the hospital), the reception at 17 or the juvenile brigade for 7 years.
He has had a blast for more than a dozen years in the communication of the DDSP67. If he leads and informs the internal police network, responds to multiple requests for confirmation of information from the press, he is also at the initiative of operations “drink a coffee with a policeman”, a concept that he ” discovered and brought back from a trip to Canada”. Without forgetting his days to make the elderly aware of the dangers of door-to-door canvassing, or the pungent field operations where he stages himself in the street in front of an audience of journalists to alert tourists to the presence and know-how of pickpockets. …
A humor and love of proximity that he practices and also claims on a daily basis on the social networks of the police, in particular on the Twitter account of the DDSP67 that he animates. We thus owe him traits of humor as frequent as PVs on a Saturday evening. Like a special police menu for Valentine’s Day inviting guests to come to the 4-star police station to taste a “beef-carrot IGPN style”, with its “All inclusive” formula, “its avocado velouté (served automatically )”, “a fricassee of chicken with fines” and for dessert “A qui profiterole crime”.
“Alsatian, a dialect that lends itself to comedy”
Humor? “That of a clown even”, he claims. In the evening, and even on weekends, the policeman escapes and rages on the stages of Alsatian theaters. He is an actor, writer, director, always of plays in Alsatian. “A dialect that lends itself to comedy”, assures Joël Irion, and which he defends. This has also earned him to be decorated by regional associations, but also to be invited to participate in local radio and television programs. And to go further in his defense of the regional language, he wrote a collection of funny stories in dialect that sold several hundred copies.
If at first glance, when you meet him during police operations in the field, his kind side of the force betrays him. Since 1996, on the boards, from the theater of Haguenau to that of Schiltigheim, he puts on all the costumes. He has signed more than ten plays in three acts. To date, his plays in dialect have reached around 350 performances. But his “bestseller”, he explains, remains In the name of the law. A play where he plays his best role… that of a policeman.