"Stop", "I stop", then "I smother" pronounced seven times: these are the words of Cédric Chouviat during the 22 seconds of his arrest, according to an expert report dated April 21, revealed by Le Monde and Mediapart. "When you hear your son say that seven times, it's hard. Basically it's 'bastard bastard', because his plate was dirty. We didn't give him a chance," said his father during a press conference he held Tuesday with the widow and children of Cédric Chouviat.
The lawyers denounce the "denial" of the institutions
On January 3, this 42-year-old man working as a delivery man, had suffered a heart attack near the Eiffel Tower after being tackled on the ground, helmet on his head, by the police after a tense roadside check. . The expertise revealed on Monday is based on recordings from Cédric Chouviat's phone, a video filmed by a policewoman on the spot, and another filmed by a motorist.
The four police officers were heard last Wednesday in police custody. Relatives of Cédric Chouviat wait for them to be indicted, and say "do not understand" that the agents have still not been suspended.
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As for the family's lawyers, they denounce "permanent police violence", a "denial" and a "contempt" of the institutions, while praising the work of the judges. Maître William Bourdon points to the attitude of the police. "Instead of stopping, they continue, because they are in the obsession with a perfectly acquired immobilization. We can clearly see that this technique leads to perversion. It leads to attacking a man," pleads it at the microphone of Europe 1.
Police reportedly "did not hear"
Lawyers for the police for their part said Tuesday that the four officers in question had "not heard" Cédric Chouviat. "When the police in police custody were confronted with these words, they were both surprised and collapsed. Collapsed because if they had heard these words they would have immediately arrested what they were doing," said master Thibault de Montbrial.
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If these words are audible in the expert's report of April 21, it is because they were "recorded by the headset" of the delivery man, according to Thibault de Montbrial. He "had the microphone close to his mouth," he says. He also claims that the noise of the fight between Cédric Chouviat and the police, as well as that of neighboring traffic, could have prevented the officers from hearing his words. "If the investigators had had the slightest doubt that such or such a police officer had lied on this point, there was a simple procedural way, which makes it possible to refer people to the end of their custody. However this choice n was not that of the examining magistrates ", argues their lawyer.
The four police officers were summoned in early July by the investigating magistrate. The family of Cédric Chouviat called the president of the republic several times, asking him to express himself and to forbid the police to practice the bottleneck. The Minister of the Interior, Christophe Castaner, announced the future abandonment of this technique in early June, but it remains authorized pending the definition of an alternative method.