"When I hear the word 'police violence' I personally suffocate," Gérald Darmanin said on Tuesday July 28 before the National Assembly's law committee. Like his predecessors, the Minister of the Interior has refuted these terms, which he considers "contradictory". 

"The police exercise violence, of course, but legitimate violence. (...) They must do it in a proportional way, they must do it in a supervised way. That some people do it outside the ethical rules, the sanction must be immediate" , he added. "But it is normal that the police and gendarmes are armed, intervene by force, so that the force remains with the law of the Republic and not that of the bands or the communities", according to him. 

"There may be abuses, that we must sanction and I think that the government sanctions them and if it does not do it, the press, the unions, the parliamentarians remind the police hierarchy, the Minister of the Interior , what he must do and it is quite legitimate, "he said. 

The keys in the "National Education package"

Judging that the crisis of authority "comes from afar", Gérald Darmanin thinks that "the keys to the solution, (...) it is the bunch of the Minister of National Education". "When we take care of kindergarten children, I'm sure that in the end the police have a little less work. I'm not angelic, there will always be people who, despite a good education, will be violent, will be traffickers and they will have to be punished. But it is obvious that when you have few words of vocabulary, when you did not know authority when you were a child, when you are excused for everything and at all times, you has a crisis of authority when you're 15, 20, 25, "he said.

“Police violence” has regularly been denounced during demonstrations of yellow vests and more recently during marches in tribute to Adama Traore or Cédric Chouviat, who died during interventions by the police.

With AFP

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