• A woman was arrested this Sunday in Paris after having beaten a firefighter who intervened for a pallet fire, on the sidelines of the traditional May 1 demonstration.

  • According to data collected by the new national observatory

    on attacks by firefighters, 1,518 acts of violence against these professionals were recorded in 2021.

  • If this overall figure is down compared to 2020, the number of injured has increased in one year.

The image, captured on the sidelines of the traditional May 1 procession in the capital, has been shared several thousand times.

Broadcast on the Twitter platform by the official account of the Paris firefighters, we see a fire soldier, fire hose in hand, being attacked twice by a protester while he was working on a pallet fire.

Quickly arrested, the young woman was taken into custody.

The scene, which immediately aroused a wave of indignation within the political class, is far from being anecdotal.

This video is part of a phenomenon that affects more and more fire brigades.

Since the last major mobilization of the profession in 2019, the public authorities and representatives of professional and volunteer firefighters have been trying to strengthen the tools to fight against these verbal and physical attacks.

Drop in violence in one year

It will have been necessary to wait for the start of the 2020 school year for a national authority to centralize the statistics on this subject.

Promised by the former Minister of the Interior, Christophe Castaner, this national observatory of violence against firefighters was set up by his successor, Gérald Darmanin, two years ago.

Chaired by the prefect Alain Thirion, this body aims to identify the facts of attacks – verbal or physical – and the injured within the various SDIS (departmental fire and rescue services) throughout the territory.

Contacted by

20 Minutes,

the spokesperson for Civil Security, Alexandre Jouassard, indicates that “1,518 acts of violence were recorded in 2021 against 1,764 in 2020”.

“If there is a drop in total, the number of firefighters injured linked to these acts of violence has increased last year.

572 injuries were recorded compared to 468 in 2020. The overall phenomenon is under control, but this latest figure shows that this is an important subject,” he continues.

Among the members who sit on the observatory, certain unions such as Unsa-Sdis are however calling for these figures to be “qualified”.

If more SDIS now report these facts to the Ministry of the Interior, they remain 30% not to do so, indicated the professional organization at the end of the executive committee which was held last February.

Training and penal response

Beyond this statistical tool, the observatory also tries to centralize the “good practices” identified in the various departments in terms of the prevention of “aggressive behavior”.

Prepared to intervene in a particularly risky context or in a crisis situation, professional or volunteer firefighters have not always been trained to deal with such violence.

“However, our attackers are our victims in 90% of cases,” recalls Yannick Tenesi, general secretary of the SNSPP-PATS union.

“During initial training, firefighters are now taught a specific posture and a risk assessment before intervening.

We know that when we intervene with a victim who has certain psychiatric disorders or in a context of domestic violence, there is a risk of aggression.

The “plan for preventing and combating attacks by firefighters”, signed in the summer of 2020 by the Minister of the Interior, also plans to strengthen support for professionals in their filing of complaints.

In the Yvelines, department where Yannick Tenesi works, “an officer accompanies us to the police station if we wish”, specifies the union official.

“We would like our employers to also be able to file a complaint when one of us is assaulted, but these complaints are almost systematically filed by the magistrates who consider that they are unfounded”, he regrets.

Despite this support and firm instructions from the ministry, some firefighters are still reluctant to push the door of a police station or a gendarmerie.

“They minimize especially when they are the subject of insults in intervention.

Yet it remains an assault.

It also testifies to a form of trivialization of the phenomenon, ”analyzes the secretary general of the SNSPP-PATS.

Since 2019, firefighters have been able to experiment with a pedestrian camera device at the instigation of their management.

If this tool can have a deterrent effect against an isolated and violent individual, its usefulness in a context where several individuals act in concert is to be understated.

For Yannick Tenesi, these situations of "ambush" call for another criminal response.

Called repeatedly by some police unions, the establishment of a mandatory minimum sentence or "minimum sentence" seems "necessary" according to the trade unionist.

A measure that is difficult to envisage since the Constitutional Council has established on various occasions that it is unconstitutional.

Sensitize the youngest

For professionals, however, these acts of violence are not new.

“It is estimated that this problem dates back a decade already”, notes Commander Geoffrey Casu, technical adviser to the National Federation of Firefighters.

According to him, this is part of a broader societal evolution: “These attacks reflect a questioning of authority and institutions in general.

The police and the gendarmes, but also the elected officials are targeted by these attacks.

Firefighters are no exception to the rule, alas, the uniform is no longer enough”.

However, the stakes are high.

According to Commander Casu, this violence should not undermine the voluntary commitment of thousands of men and women who join the firefighters.

“The objective is to ensure that this phenomenon does not become an obstacle to this volunteering,” he underlines.

This is the reason why "the subject should not remain internal to firefighters only", insists Yannick Tenesi.

Among the axes proposed by the plan of the Ministry of the Interior, an “awareness” component has thus been developed.

“We try to develop prevention and education in high schools and colleges to explain to young people what the vocation of firefighter is.

They are our best relays,” concludes Alexandre Jouassard.

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May 1: A demonstrator arrested after the attack on a firefighter attacked during the overflows in Paris

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May 1: Degraded signs during the demonstration in Paris, Gérald Darmanin denounces "unacceptable violence"

  • Firefighters

  • Assault

  • Violence

  • May 1

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