"Beatings" and lack of means: a journalist tells of his infiltration into the police

Violence, racist and homophobic insults but also lack of means, suicide and unhappiness of the troops: in his book

, published Thursday by Goutte d'Or editions, the journalist Valentin Gendrot recounts his two turbulent years of infiltration in the Parisian police .

Under his real name, he joined the National Police School of Saint-Malo, left it as "security assistant", the lowest hierarchical rank, then was assigned a year to the psychiatric infirmary of the Paris police headquarters before to get the job he was aiming for: the police station of the 19th arrondissement of Paris. 

In an interview with AFP, he told his first day, "completely stunned": the commissioning of his weapon is chaotic, he sees "a police officer hitting a guard" too noisy, while a woman is dismissed when she comes to deposit a handrail after "death threats" from her husband.

A "smudge" of a policeman covered by his colleagues

The most explosive passage of his book, Valentin Gendrot claims to have witnessed a "blunder" committed by a colleague and that he himself covered with other police officers.

That day, his patrol was called by a neighbor complaining about young people listening to music at the foot of a building.

According to his account, the control degenerates when one of the police officers "pats" the cheek of a teenager who, in response, provokes the official: "I take you one on one".

The policeman gives a first "slap" to the young man who replies verbally.

The policeman then "unpacks": "A slap, then two, then three, maybe four or five," says the journalist.

He then "breaks out" with "punches" and insults on the teenager, who is then taken to the police station for identity verification, he says without detailing in his book the seriousness of these injuries.

The two file a complaint: the police officer for contempt and threats, the teenager for violence.

A "lying" report is then written to "charge the kid and absolve" the police officer, affirms Valentin Gendrot who will also incriminate the teenager during an internal investigation.

"The police are a clan" and "the one who denounces, a traitor", justifies Valentin Gendrot.

By accusing himself of having covered his colleague, the journalist explains that he wanted to help "denounce a thousand other mistakes of this type", even if "it was an extremely complicated decision".

IGPN has been entered

The Paris police headquarters announced Thursday that it had reported these acts of violence to the public prosecutor.

"In order to establish the veracity of the facts related in this book and relayed by the media, and at the request of the Minister of the Interior, the Prefect of Police, Didier Lallement, brought them to the attention of the Public Prosecutor and at the same time seized the General Inspectorate of the National Police for administrative purposes, ”she added in her press release.

His book also evokes a number of ferments for the long-term discontent of the staff: cars and premises out of age, suicide of a colleague and hostility of the population (a person in custody openly invites them to commit suicide), salary of 1,340 net monthly euros in Paris.

Anticipating possible criticism, he stresses that his work is "not anti-cop" but addresses the "great taboos of the police".

"It is also in their interest that we speak of police violence", "always the act of a minority", he said.

According to him, "the majority" of these officials "pay for the bad reputation and the climate of appalling tension that exists between the inhabitants and the police."