“This reform that we are bringing to the level of the country, it is good and it is carried out by people who are experts”: President Emmanuel Macron supported Monday in Marseille the reform of the judicial police, yet disputed for months.
After a meeting, without the press, at the headquarters of the PJ in Marseille, Emmanuel Macron brushed aside the concerns expressed by a large part of the judicial chain, explaining that “what makes it possible to go further is to have the means “.
Darmanin’s project
“I fully understand the PJists who wear this and that’s why we gave them two years ago, and I decided to strengthen them, human resources, equipment too, for the judicial police and the scientific police”, he insisted, questioned by journalists after a trip to the Campanules district, where the inhabitants had mobilized in January to prevent the installation of a deal point.
The project wanted by the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin plans to place all the police services at department level (intelligence, public security, border police and judicial police) under the authority of a single Departmental Director of the national police, answerable to the prefect. The 5,600 agents of the PJ will thus be integrated into an investigation sector, alongside those of public security, in charge of everyday crime.
“Downgrading”
For several months, magistrates but also PJ investigators and lawyers denounced the danger of a “leveling down” of the prestigious PJ, responsible for crimes and investigations into organized crime or corruption, and a reinforcement the weight of the prefect in the investigations.
The protest, which had concerned all of France, had been particularly strong in Marseilles where the PJ is in charge of complex investigations to dismantle drug trafficking networks which have international ramifications.
Eric Arella thanked
After a demonstration of 200 police officers opposed to the reform, arms crossed and silent during the visit of the director of the national police in Marseille, the ex-boss of the PJ for the southern zone Eric Arella had been dismissed from his post in October .
“The reality that we denounce is however being put in place slyly since the group for the fight against breaches of probity is abandoned”, regretted an investigator from the Pj on condition of anonymity. There is “a lot of resignation in the troops, and planned departures”, confides another.