The French Association of Investigating Magistrates (AFMI) alerted Friday to the "dangers" of the territorial reform of the national police, already in application in several departments, seeing in it "the announced end of the judicial police".

“AFMI fully supports the opposition shown by field investigators to this reform which, if carried through, risks putting an end to the judicial police and jeopardizing the fight against organized crime. and financial in France, and more generally against any form of serious delinquency”, writes the association in a press release.

This reform, reviled by the judicial police sector, consists of bringing together, at the level of the department, the different professions (public security, judicial police, border police, and intelligence).

It is planned that the new departmental director of the police will be placed under the functional authority of the prefect of the department, the hierarchical authority returning to the zonal director.

"Risk in terms of breach of the secrecy of the investigation and the instruction"

The reform, already tested in eight departments, is scheduled for 2023.


In its press release, the AFMI denounces a "management of the shortage of resources to the detriment of the high-level judiciary", this reform being "envisaged without the creation of investigators”.

The investigating judges believe in particular that as a result, "inquiries into letters rogatory, for the most serious cases, will be less well processed, in longer periods".

In addition, they fear that this reform presents “a real risk in terms of breaching the secrecy of the investigation and the instruction”, the departmental director of the national police being under the authority of the prefect.

This “can only augur interference, or at the very least suspicion of interference, in judicial investigations, in particular when they relate to economic and financial files and sensitive files”, warn the magistrates.

"In a world where crime is increasingly sophisticated, where it increasingly uses cutting-edge technologies, and defies national legislation through organized crime on a global scale, the specialization of investigators and the retention of judicial police investigators should be a priority”, they finally believe.

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