"Stop", "I stop", then "I stifle" pronounced seven times: these are the words of Cédric Chouviat during the 22 seconds of his arrest, according to an expert report dated April 21, revealed by Le Monde and Mediapart. Cédric Chouviat, who died following a police check in early January in Paris, said seven times that he was suffocating the four police officers now under threat of being charged.
On January 3, Cédric Chouviat, a 42-year-old father working as a delivery man, had suffered a heart attack near the Eiffel Tower after being tackled on the ground, helmet on his head, by three police officers after '' a tense roadside check. Transported in critical condition to the hospital, he died on January 5 as a result of asphyxia "with fracture of the larynx", according to the first elements of the autopsy communicated by the parquet floor of Paris, which had opened a judicial investigation for "manslaughter".
Thirteen videos of the arrest
To reconstruct the scene, the expert from the National Gendarmerie's Criminal Research Institute analyzed thirteen videos of this arrest, nine filmed by the delivery man himself, three recorded by one of the four police officers present at the time of the events and the last by a motorist.
The four police officers were heard last Wednesday in police custody, prior to a possible indictment, we also learned Monday from judicial sources and close to the case. According to RTL, the examining magistrate summoned them "in early July" and they could then be prosecuted. "The exchange is relatively correct, even if we can feel a form of" provocation "or" distrust "in the words of the person being checked," notes the expert in his analysis of the soundtracks.
Press conference scheduled for Tuesday morning
During the exchange, reconstructed in his last twelve minutes, Cédric Chouviat repeatedly called the police "clowns" or one of them "poor guy". The delivery man also repeatedly told the officials not to touch him while the latter asked him to back up. "Apart from the arrest phase, we did not highlight any blatant words or rumors of violence" on both sides, adds the expert. The latter notes that the police are trying to end control several times before the situation escalates. "At 11 '16", the controlled person told the police that he was just a "puppet". The policeman decides to arrest him, ”he relates. “During the next 22 seconds, we hear different noises that we cannot identify. The person arrested repeatedly said "I'm suffocating". And we hear one of the police say, "It's good, it's good, bracelets OK," "he wrote later.
Joined by AFP, Thibault de Montbrial, lawyer for the police, did not wish to react. The lawyers of the Chouviat family, Mes Arié Alimi, William Bourdon and Vincent Brengarth, for their part announced the holding of a press conference this Tuesday morning at 11 am.
Was there a "police blunder"?
Since the start of the case, the victim's family has denounced a "police blunder" caused by "dangerous" arrest techniques. She calls for a reclassification of the facts as "willful violence resulting in death", a crime punishable by assault, and the suspension of the police.
A few days after the facts, the Minister of the Interior, Christophe Castaner, had estimated that the autopsy results "(raised) legitimate questions, to which answers (should) be given in all transparency". "If there are faults which are characterized, we will take all the necessary sanctions", had promised the minister.
Since then, the debate around police violence has found a very strong echo in the world following the death of George Floyd, a black man filmed being suffocated by a white police officer in the United States at the end of May. In France, he led the Minister of the Interior to announce the imminent abandonment of the so-called "key to choking" technique of arrest, as claimed by the Chouviat family.
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- Police violence
- Paris
- Cedric Chouviat
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