“Let’s be clear, the problem of the police is justice. “The slogan, launched from the platform by the secretary general of the Alliance union, Fabien Vanhemelryck, may date from last year, it was warmly applauded by the approximately 300 police officers gathered this Monday noon, on the place Saint-Michel, in the heart of Paris. All were demonstrating against the indictment for “intentional homicide” of one of their own.
The tragedy took place a few steps away, on the Pont-Neuf, on the evening of the election of Emmanuel Macron: a 24-year-old policeman opened fire on a car which, according to his story, was trying to drive away. evade a control and would have failed to hit one of the police officers. The driver and his front passenger died, the man in the back seat was seriously injured.
In front of the Saint-Michel fountain, everyone believes that the qualification does not correspond to the reality of the intervention. And this, especially since the judges went beyond the requisitions of the prosecution. “The conditions were clear, we had a vehicle that was going to hit our colleagues, there was clearly a threat to their physical integrity”, insists Julien Schenardi, general secretary in Val-de-Marne of the Alliance union, at the initiative of the demonstration joined by Synergie and the Unsa-Police. “In this qualification, he has the will and the intention to kill, but this policeman fired a response shot, it’s an aberration, it doesn’t fit with what happened”, adds Jérôme Jimenez, responsible Île-de-France of the Unsa Police, which believes that self-defense cannot be denied.
“Common sense justice”
The presumption of self-defense for the police is precisely the flagship demand of this Monday’s rally. According to this principle, it would no longer be up to the police to prove that they were in a state of self-defence when they used their weapon, but up to the person concerned to demonstrate that it was misused. of the force. “If a policeman uses his weapon, it is to defend himself, to put an end to a serious danger for him and for others. Today, the response of justice, it is a suspicion on the national police force , explains Benoît Barret, national secretary province of Alliance. And the trade unionist – who argues that there is a refusal to comply every thirty minutes in France – to insist: “When we use our weapon, we want to be sure that it will not turn against us. The murderers are not us. »
Faced with criticism of the introduction of a presumption of self-defence, considered by some to be “a license to kill” granted to the police, the police defend themselves: “The presumption of self-defence is not no case an exoneration from the responsibility of our colleague, it is just the inversion of the burden of proof”, explains Patrice Ribeiro, the national secretary of the Synergie Officiers union. “When a police officer uses his weapon, in 100% of cases, he considers that he is within his rights, that he is in the context of self-defense. It is up to the opposing party to prove that this is not the case, not up to him, ”adds Olivier Varlet, secretary general of the UNSA Police.
A demonstration that is not unanimous
“A decision to charge is not a conviction; the person under investigation is never presumed guilty but always presumed innocent”, reacted the Syndicate of the magistrature during the day. For its part, the Union of Judges (USM) considered that “the call to demonstrate against a court decision is particularly harmful and dangerous in a democracy”. And the dissonances are observed even in the ranks of the police. While union elections are scheduled for the end of 2022, this case has exacerbated tensions between representatives of the peacekeepers. The Union SGP Police Unit, a competitor of Alliance, has thus decided not to call for demonstrations and not to “take positions that could harm” the colleague under investigation, recalling that he is presumed innocent.