This is partly the "yellow vests" effect. The IGPN, the police force, was charged in 2019 with an unprecedented number of judicial investigations, more than half of which relate to charges of “violence” by the police.
Last year, the General Inspectorate of the National Police was entrusted 1,460 investigations by justice, a figure up by 23.7% compared to 2018, according to its annual report consulted this Monday by AFP and published in the heart of a new controversy on police violence.
Many accusations during the demonstrations
With 310 files in 2019, "the movement of" yellow vests "resulted in over-solicitation from the General Inspectorate of the National Police," said the report. Of the 1,460 judicial investigations entrusted last year to "beef-carrots", 868 relate to "willful violence", a figure which jumped 41% compared to 2018 (+256).
38.8% of these disputed uses of force are interventions or arrests in the context of demonstrations, 12.8% are identity or road checks and 14.1% arise from “allegations of violence against of those detained ”. "These referrals to the judicial authority do not constitute a presumption of misconduct by the agents," warns Brigitte Jullien, the director of the IGPN, an institution whose impartiality is regularly questioned.
"A dozen police officers liable to be prosecuted"
"This erroneous approach makes it even more complicated to understand in fine the numerous classification decisions (without follow-up, note) which are taken by the judicial authority and, in no case, by the IGPN", specifies the report.
According to BrigitteJullien, out of the 399 "yellow vests" files attributed to the IGPN since the movement began in November 2018, 130 relate to serious injuries and 274 have been referred to justice. "Today, we have a dozen police officers who are liable to be prosecuted," she explains.
"Many and firmer responses"
According to the police, the level of investigations attributed to him in 2019 is due to the recurrence of protests, the increase in violence against the police resulting in "numerous and firmer responses" but also to the choice of the judicial authorities, in particular in Paris, to entrust to the IGPN the complaints relating to the use of force, “whatever the gravity of the facts”
Amid controversies over policing, the use of defensive bullet launchers (LBDs) and handguns of disengaging (GMDs) accused of injuring or mutilating several protesters fell after having reached unprecedented levels in 2018, a year marked by violent demonstrations of "yellow vests", a high school student movement and overflows on the sidelines of the Football World Cup. Their use remains at significant levels, however: 10,785 LBD shots against 18,976 in 2018 (-43 and 3,244 grenades against 5,420 the previous year (-40).
The question of the impartiality of the IGPN
"The media coverage of certain injuries and the reactions elicited by the use of this weapon (the LBD, editor's note) have probably played an inhibiting role for the police," notes the report.
From “yellow vests” disgusted with the resounding affairs of Steve Caniço in Nantes or Cédric Chouviat in Paris, the theme of police violence - terminology challenged by the executive - has in fact imposed itself in public debate. And with it, the question of the role and the impartiality of the IGPN, questioned in particular by the left opposition or the ex-LREM deputy, Aurélien Taché.
A new context
“All the institutions, the doctors and the lawyers, have internal Orders, that does not call into question their impartiality. It is not because, in the midst of media affairs, the IGPN has made conclusions which do not go in the desired direction that we are biased. We do our work objectively, "defends Brigitte Jullien.
Last January, after the death of Cédric Chouviat during an arrest, Emmanuel Macron had asked the Minister of the Interior to make, "as soon as possible, clear proposals to improve the ethics, the elements of control" of the forces of the order.
The recent demonstrations in France against police violence, in the wake of the death of George Floyd in the United States, only increase the pressure on Place Beauvau.
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