INTERVIEW
Four police officers from the security and intervention company (CSI) of Seine-Saint-Denis were indicted Thursday for forgery and use of forgery in writing, arbitrary arrests, voluntary violence and unauthorized transport of narcotics. In particular, they are accused of having organized a false anti-drug operation in the summer of 2019. In response, the Paris prefecture decided to dissolve the whole company, which did not fail to make the police unions jump. "It's a far too quick reaction, what do we do with the 140 other colleagues who do their job properly?", Notably reacted on Friday, to Matthieu Belliard's microphone on Europe 1, Grégory Joron, the deputy secretary general of the union SGP-Police unit FO.
"This service has all its usefulness in a department like 93, it has proven itself. It is regularly praised for its results", pleads this trade unionist who denounces an "injustice".
In June 2019, the IGPN received two complaints from two young men, one of whom accuses an officer of having made believe that he had a bag of cannabis. A violent arrest would have followed. For Grégory Joron, this case should have been limited to the police officers questioned. "From four officials, we apply a decision to an entire service," he annoys.
>> Find all of Matthieu Belliard's interviews in replay and in podcast here
Hierarchy pressures
"In services and departments where police action is complicated, like 93, we are borderline, it is obvious, if we want it to work, from time to time", argues this policeman, who recalls that his colleagues remain "presumed innocent". "I am not saying that we are trampling on the Republican framework, but the facts [accused of the accused police officers] are headings of the Criminal Code, we must see what is behind and prove it."
Grégory Joron, also evokes the pressures of the hierarchy as a factor that can explain their behavior. "We are in a hypocritical system. The police still operate with a number policy, whether we like it or not", he points out, before conceding: "It is a managerial tool which tints the way in which the police work every day. "