National tribute to the policeman Eric Masson killed in Avignon. – PHILIPPE MAGONI / SIPA
The emotion has not fallen back into the ranks. Two weeks after the murder of Brigadier Eric Masson in Avignon, thousands of police officers are to gather in front of the National Assembly on Wednesday at the call of the unions, who want more severity for the “law enforcement aggressors”. All the unions called on “citizens” to come “support” them during the rally scheduled from 1 pm to 3 pm. While security has become a campaign theme a few weeks before the regional elections and one year before the presidential election, a wide spectrum of elected officials should be present, from Republicans to the National Rally, including the Socialist Party and the Communist Party ( PCF).
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin on Monday confirmed his presence at the demonstration, during a trip to the Eure. “I will be at this event on Wednesday. It is a demonstration for the Republic ”, declared the Minister of the Interior, stressing that“ the anger of the police officers is legitimate ”. “I will tell them both my support and my presence and tell them that we are all in the same boat to fight against insecurity,” he added.
A firmer “criminal response”
The unions decided to organize this rally after the murder of Eric Masson, killed at a deal point in Avignon on May 5. A drama that shook the police, already marked by the assassination on April 23 of Stéphanie Monfeture, administrative officer at the Rambouillet police station (Yvelines), by a Tunisian who would have become radicalized. According to union officials, many “angry” and “disgusted” police officers see the brigadier’s death during this banal intervention as a symbol of repeated violence against them, which requires a firmer “criminal response”.
“Every evening, the police are caught in ambush or victims of projectile throwing”, assures Grégory Joron of SGP-FO Unit, for whom justice “does not use the right tools”, by “decriminalizing” some offenses such as ambush, for which the penalties incurred are however significant.
In 2019, 11,217 police officers and gendarmes were injured on mission against 9,961 in 2017, according to the Ministry of the Interior. Figures which do not detail the number of injuries caused by an assault or by an accident and which run over the period of “yellow vests” demonstrations. In 2020, a year considered special due to confinements, 8,719 police officers were injured on mission.
The fad of hard floors
After Avignon, the government quickly gave pledges to the unions, received on May 10 in Matignon. Jean Castex in particular undertook to extend the safety period to thirty years for persons sentenced to life imprisonment for a crime against a police officer or a gendarme. And to strictly limit the possibilities of reducing sentences for those who attack the police.
But the unions deplore that their “most important demand”, “the implementation of minimum sentences for attackers of the police”, was not “taken into account”. For Fabien Vanhemelryck, General Secretary of the Alliance union, minimum sentences (also called floor sentences) are “the only solution to stop impunity and insecurity”. “The Gordian knot is not the increase in the quantum of the sentence, but the application of existing penalties, especially for everything at the bottom of the spectrum, that is to say everyday attacks” , also considers Patrice Ribeiro, General Secretary of Synergie Officiers. “This is where the feeling of impunity is created and nourished”, according to the trade unionist.
A request not retained by the executive, which “perhaps anticipates the difficulty” of adopting a measure “constitutionally flawed and which will have no effect”, according to Mathieu Zagrodzki, associate researcher at the Research Center sociological studies on law and penal institutions (Cesdip). He recalls that the minimum penalties, put in place under Nicolas Sarkozy and repealed under his successor François Hollande in 2014, had been “relatively little implemented”, the judges being able to waive them.