They are easily recognizable: a quickdraw of bikers dressed all in black, white helmets with the “police” insignia on the back and above all, circulating in pairs on motorcycles around the demonstrations. These police and gendarmes constitute the brigade for the repression of violent motorized action, known as Brav-M, which has been under fire from critics for a few days.
With the use of 49.3 by the government to push its pension reform through Parliament, spontaneous and sometimes undeclared protests have flourished across France, especially in Paris. It is the Brav-M which was commissioned to frame them, or rather disperse them. However, their mission is not so much the maintenance of order as the repression, as its title indicates. On the contrary, “it sows more disorder”, judge with 20 minutes Anne-Sophie Simpere, author of How the State Attacks Our Freedoms (Plon). On Wednesday, three deputies from La France insoumise called for its dissolution.
Mobility, arrest, repression
It is with the movement of “yellow vests” that the Paris police headquarters has brought motorized repression up to date. In December 2018, the prefect at the time, Michel Delpuech, set up rapid action detachments (DAR) which were quickly replaced by the Brav-M, inaugurated under his successor, Didier Lallement. These are pairs of police officers traveling on motorcycles with the official objective of “dispersing the groups, according to a graduated and proportionate use of force and to carry out a maximum of arrests. »
The goal is to be fast and to be able to move easily from one point of tension to another in the demonstrations. “This allows us to move to any point in the capital extremely quickly to put an end to abuses,” explained Laurent Nuñez, Wednesday morning on France Info. Initially, these brigades were non-permanent, but one of them became a permanent unit of the Public Order and Traffic Department (DOPC) in 2021, explains Lucas Levy-Lajeunesse, volunteer at the Paris Observatory of Public Liberties (OPLP), which will release a detailed report on the Brav-M in a few weeks. “It seems that they have versatile functions” on days when there are no demonstrations, he continues, “since we do not see them”. Le Figaro reports for example in 2022 a road check which degenerated at the Porte de Saint-Ouen, carried out by the Brav-M.
A brigade is made up of 18 motorcycles and 36 men. In total, for the entire Paris prefecture, which has authority over departments 75, 92, 93 and 94, the brigades include 180 motorcycles and 360 law enforcement officers, reports West France. Unlike the mobile forces, the Brav-M answers directly to the prefect, when the CRS companies have “a commander or a captain who relays the orders of the commissioner”, explains another CRS questioned by Mediapart. They also exist outside the capital “in the form of mixed systems of protection and arrest [dits DMPI]which are closely articulated with the mobile forces”, we learn in a Senate information report.
Of the “disorder” in the maintenance of order
The drivers are pilots from the service of motorcycle companies or sometimes gendarmes from the Republican Guard and are not supposed to carry out the interventions. They transport agents from different units, but mainly intervention companies (CI) and the anti-crime brigade (Bac). And this is precisely one of the points of tension. Brav-M agents “are not trained in maintaining order, they are specialists in flagrante delicto with a culture of “jumping on it””, explains Olivier Cahn, professor of criminal law at CY Cergy Paris University. and researcher at the center for sociological research on law and penal institutions (Cesdip).
The maintenance of order will consist of “supervising, ensuring that there is no break-in”, it is more about prevention, explains Olivier Cahn. When the Brav-M will aim to arrest the perpetrators of violence or breakage. “These are two different visions of policing,” he sums up. And these two visions of not always compatible.
The CRS questioned by Mediapart thus complains of his colleagues from the Brav-M who “make the mess more than anything else” and “club in all directions”. A video circulating on social networks and captured in June 2020 also shows a moment of deep disagreement between Brav-M agents and a company of gendarmes on the meaning of a “dispersion”. “It is a source of discord because coordination is very complicated,” explains Anne-Sophie Simpere, according to whom their presence tends to “rather exacerbate tensions with the demonstrators and sow more disorder than maintenance of order. “These are units that act quite violently and that risk aggravating the situation as well as shifting the points of violence,” she develops.
Sometimes disproportionate use of force
Their creation was justified in the light of “yellow vests” by what “considered the Ministry of the Interior as new forms of violence in citizen gatherings, recalls Olivier Cahn. Groups that parasitize processions and commit violent actions. In other words, those who are commonly called “the thugs”. After the episode of the Arc de Triomphe in particular, the objective of challenging as many of these troublemakers as possible quickly guided Didier Lallement’s strategy for maintaining order.
For the past few days, however, these brigades have been accused of using disproportionate force in rallies against the pension reform. The police have the right to use force, but this use is strictly regulated by law, and must, according to article R112-1 of the Internal Security Code, be “necessary” and “proportionate. “However, for Olivier Cahn, “the threshold of tolerance and the definition of violent action are extremely low today, for example setting fire to a trash can”. This use of force was then deemed “disproportionate” by the three rebellious deputies Thomas Portes, Antoine Léaument and Ugo Bernalicis.
“We see illegal acts,” also says Anne-Sophie Simpere. A preliminary investigation was thus entrusted to the IGPN following of a video clearly showing a policeman beating a protester which does not appear to be dangerous. A Parisian demonstrator also tells Release that a Brav-M policeman told him rolled on the leg. Equally disturbing images also date from previous major demonstrations such as those against the so-called “global security” law. »