Facies checks: the police must question "ways of working", for Korell

The relationship between the executive and the police became strained on Saturday with the call from the two main peacekeepers' unions to end identity checks.

Alliance and SGP Unit criticize the Head of State for his comments made on the online media Brut.

Emmanuel Macron explained on Friday that he wanted to face the issue of facial checks.

"Today when you have a skin color that is not white, you are much more controlled (..) You are identified as a problem factor and it is unbearable," he said, promising the launch in January of a national platform for reporting discrimination.

"It will require political will"

"I do not believe that we should continue to hysterize the debate, it is just counterproductive what we are doing there", reacts Christophe Korell, former police officer and president of the Agora association of citizens of the police and justice, about the strike, Saturday night on Europe 1. "I believe that we, the police, must be able to be reflective and question certain ways of working. And that, on the other hand, that will require political will, ”he adds.

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"The problem is that we do not hysterize much, we are the spokespersons of the police officers who, for their part, have suffered for months several waves of 'potential' systemic racism, systemic violence and dysfunctions with magnifying effects on emblematic cases ", refutes Grégory Joron on Europe 1. The deputy general secretary of the SGP Police-FO unit union considers that" the problem of the police ", in particular concerning the face checks, is" hidden ".

"Obviously my colleagues won't check the lady with her little Caddy"

"We are asked to fight against drug trafficking. We are sent to neighborhoods with a population mainly from immigration, so inevitably my colleagues will not control the lady with her little shopping cart who goes to the market to look for her vegetables, if we want to fight against narcotics ... Obviously we often control young people, and often young men who are indeed potentially from an immigrant background, "he describes.

But for him, the question of the consequences of this policy for the police must be asked.

"If my colleagues don't do the job, we tell them: 'You didn't do anything all day'. And if they do, we tell them 'we have to stop checking people', otherwise you are accused. of facial control! "

"No long-term vision" for the police

"It's been 40 years that there is no program for the police, no long-term vision", deplores Christophe Korell who thinks that the current government "will not do much", in particular because of a tight legislative agenda and insufficient work done upstream.

A "young man perceived as black or Arab (...) has a 20 times higher probability" of being controlled than the rest of the population, the Defender of Rights estimated in a report published in January 2017.