Between the police and "the first cop in France", the dialogue is broken. "The cops in France no longer consider Christophe Castaner as the supposed first cop in France. He let us go on Monday, threw us in the pasture on Monday. It is up to him to boost Everest's confidence", thundered Yves Lefebvre, secretary general of the SGP Police Unit, which called on its colleagues "to stop questioning, to stop intervening".

At the union's call, rallies took place at the end of the afternoon in several cities in France, notably in Saint-Etienne, Bobigny, Toulouse and even Lille where, in the rain, a hundred police officers dressed in their uniforms shouted "Castaner resignation" before intoning La Marseillaise. Each time, the police symbolically placed their handcuffs on the ground.

Christophe Castaner however tried Thursday to defuse the anger of the police. He has received the police unions, Alliance and Unsa-police, and he is due to meet with officers and commissioners on Friday. But to date, the Minister of the Interior has failed to defuse their anger. 

Alliance has threatened industrial action in the coming days. "An interior minister must be behind his police," said Fabien Vanhemelryck, secretary general. "The minister is out of bounds but the President of the Republic is just as much."

"Zero tolerance" does not pass 

The causes of anger are vast: the prohibition to use the "choke key" as a technique of arrest, is equivalent, according to the unions, to leave them without means to arrest violent people; "zero tolerance" for acts of racism in the police is seen as a general charge.

The death of George Floyd in the United States under the knee of a police officer revived in France the accusations of police violence and racism. Charges brought by the Adama Traoré committee, named after a young black man who died in July 2016 after being arrested by gendarmes. Struck by the mobilization of 20,000 people, on June 2 in front of the Palace of Justice, the executive tried to calm tensions, and President Emmanuel Macron asked Christophe Castaner to act. Which was done on Monday.           

"The feeling of deep injustice"

The director general of the national police (DGPN), Frédéric Veaux, and the Paris prefect of police, Didier Lallement, have each written to their respective troops to assure them of their support and their confidence. "In this very special period when the challenges to our action are permanent and increasingly aggressive, I want to tell you that there is no doubt," the police chief wrote on Wednesday.

"Faced with the confusions and the amalgams maintained by a minority, I share with you the feeling of a deep injustice", wrote Thursday the DGPN.

On Wednesday, the unions had already sounded the alarm with Frédéric Veaux, telling him that the "disgust", that the "feeling of abandonment" of the police after the statements of the minister.

With AFP

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