Can we film the police?

Audio 02:33

Police officers and CRS patrol the Butte Montmartre in Paris on October 30, 2020, while France has raised its level of security alert throughout the territory (illustrative image).

REUTERS / Charles Platiau

By: Amaury de Rochegonde Follow

6 min

Concern around the proposed law on "comprehensive security", supported by the government, which aims to regulate the dissemination of images of interventions by police forces.

Publicity

The defender of rights Claire Hédon was worried Thursday about this bill on security which " 

 ".

For the two LRM deputies at the origin of the text, Alice Thourot and Jean-Michel Fauvergue, it is only a question of preventing images from being broadcast with the aim of "harming the physical or mental integrity" of a policeman.

How? 'Or' What ?

By showing his face or any other identification element during a police operation.

This covers images of videographers or independent reporters who cover the demonstrations, including live, and show faces or signs of recognition likely to constitute a threat to the police officer on a social network.

One year in prison and a fine of 45,000 euros could penalize any breach of this provision approved Thursday in the Law Committee.

The defender of rights recalls the public nature of the action of the police and how much the capturing of images of these police interventions falls under democratic control.

It also denounces other elements of the text as an invasion of privacy, such as the possibility of monitoring a demonstration by drones, of using police pedestrian cameras in real time or of consulting the video surveillance images without authorization.

But it is above all the supervision of the broadcasting of police operations that makes the media jump, which often resort to such images.

First, because the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, does not bother with subtleties and speaks of "banning" the dissemination of the image of police and gendarmes on social networks, in which way he meets the requirements of police officers who want damage to their image to come before the right to information.

Then because, as RSF reminds us, a lot of images are broadcast live on social networks.

The police could then arrest a videographer or a journalist, believing that he films them with the intention of harming them even though he is in the process of attesting to police violence.

Prosecuted, this same journalist or videographer could no longer be able to cover a demonstration.

Would we, too, no longer be able to film in France an act as serious as the murder of George Floyd as soon as the police opposed it?

David Dufresne, who has just released the documentary

About Police Violence, believes that his film simply could not exist.

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