The former “big cops” were received Tuesday evening at the Élysée for a dinner around Emmanuel Macron. The Head of State wished to pay tribute to them and to have their opinion on the police profession as well as the developments made to the profession in recent years.
“Big cops” for valuable advice. President Emmanuel Macron invited some “great police figures” of recent decades to dinner on Tuesday evening. The objective: to discuss in particular the role of the “police institution” in the face of “new threats”, indicated the Elysée.
The head of state “wished for the first time to bring them together to pay tribute to them, to talk with them about the pride of being a police officer and to gather their opinions on the contemporary police institution in the face of new threats after the reinforcements of resources and the procedural changes made these five recent years”, according to the presidency.
Among the guests were Robert Broussard, Ange Mancini, Charles Pellegrini, Jo Querry and Frédéric Péchenard, the latter being LR vice-president of the Ile-de-France regional council, in particular in charge of security issues.
Reforms at the heart of trade
They “worked on famous cases”, specified the Elysée, such as the French Connection, the hunt for Jacques Mesrine, the shooting of the Parisian bar of Thélème in 1975, the assassination of deputy Jean de Broglie in 1976 or even the hostage taking of a kindergarten in Neuilly in 1993 by “Human Bomb”.
This dinner took place while the Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin and the director general of the national police Frédéric Veaux defend their plan to reform the judicial police, which plans to place all the police services of a department – intelligence, public security, border police (PAF) and judicial police (PJ ) -under the authority of a single Departmental Director of the National Police (DDPN), reporting to the prefect.
Gérald Darmanin and Frédéric Veaux were also present at this dinner.
The reform of the national police, which is itself supported by the Head of State, encounters opposition from PJ investigators who fear the dilution of their know-how, or even the abandonment of certain territories. The National Conference of Public Prosecutors (CNPR) has also expressed concern.
During a trip to Nice in January, Emmanuel Macron reaffirmed his ambition to double the number of police officers present on the ground by the end of the decade.
This will notably involve an increase of “8,500 police and gendarme posts” in five years, including “3,000 from 2023”, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said on September 6, on the eve of the presentation to the Council of Ministers of a new version of the orientation and programming bill of the Ministry of the Interior (Lopmi). The lopmi is currently being considered for first reading in the Senate.