Three years later, they will be tried for intentional violence with a weapon. This Thursday, two brigadiers from the BAC of Stains (Seine-Saint-Denis) will have to answer for their actions before the Bobigny court.
On the night of August 15 to 16, 2021, around 1:30 a.m., this crew, in civilian clothes and in an unmarked car, intervened to check a vehicle whose driver was drunk. First stopped near the police, the car reverses then moves forward again.
The two police officers are no longer allowed to hold a weapon
An amateur video shows part of the intervention: one of the officials trying to enter the passenger compartment and two police officers firing several times at the car. Eight bullets were fired in 6.25 seconds, seriously injuring the motorist and the passenger. Their vital prognosis was compromised for a time.
The driver, Nordine A., was hit five times, in the abdomen, arms, groin and thorax, causing 127 days of total incapacity for work (ITT). In the back, a bullet hit the passenger, Merryl, in the spleen. She was prescribed 100 days of ITT.
Indicted in 2022, the civil servants, aged 29 and 32, can no longer work on public roads or hold a weapon. “My clients were confronted with a crazy driver who put them in danger and whom they could not stop without resorting to their service weapons. We will demonstrate that these shootings were fully legitimate and justified,” their lawyer Laurent-Franck Liénard told AFP.
“A balance is missing in the procedure”
However, noted the investigating judge in her order, even if the driver’s behavior was dangerous for the police officers when he was reversing, the officers only opened fire afterwards, when the driver had resumed walking. Before.
Above all, she added, the shots, some less than a meter from the victim, were not proportionate and did not meet the legal requirements of self-defense.
“This trial will therefore also indirectly be that of the relaxation of the rules for the use of firearms by the police and the invocation of self-defense in cases of refusal to comply,” said in a press release. the Justice Committee for Nordine.
Nordine A. assured that he was not aware of the function of the police officers who intervened in plain clothes without distinctive signs. “A balance is missing in the procedure, I hope that the court will restore it,” declared Me Margot Pugliese, who defends Nordine.
In an ancillary procedure, he was tried in immediate appearance for refusal to comply and willful violence. On appeal, he was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment.