The appeal trial of the 13 men accused of having participated in the dramatic fire of two police cars, in October 2016 in Viry-Châtillon, in Essonne, opens Tuesday morning in Paris.

While the victims are still hoping for an explanation, Europe 1 went to the Grande Borne district, where the situation between young people and the police has not really changed. 

REPORT

Two police cars transformed into fireballs, set on fire by Molotov cocktails.

The images of the assault committed in Viry-Châtillon, in Essonne, in October 2016, had toured television channels and social networks.

Three years later, five of the thirteen young people accused of participating in the facts were acquitted by the juvenile assize court in 2019 - four were under 18 at the time of the facts.

The others were sentenced to terms ranging from 10 to 20 years for attempted murder - well short of requisitions.

As the appeal process opens, which is to last six weeks in Paris, Europe 1 went to the Grande Borne district, where it all started, and where the situation has not really changed. 

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"A lot" of very young police officers

The camera that filmed the scene is still there, firmly attached to a lamppost, itself surrounded by concrete blocks.

Metal cutting plates have even been welded to prevent anyone from climbing.

A few meters away, Karim swallows a kebab before going back to work.

"They reinforced the police a little more," says the young father, who lives in the heart of the Grande Borne.

"But it's police officers who are young, who are almost the same age as some of the young people they control. They are there, in 'what are you going to do?' Mode, with insults." 

"We have a lot of young civil servants", abounds Christian Toussaint du Wast, of the Alliance union in Essonne.

"The administration does not manage to retain the oldest, who sometimes prefer to go to the provinces. Because even if the working conditions are not necessarily better, at least they are more at home and in a slightly less context. bellicose, warlike and vindictive than what one can have on the territory of Essonne. "

Alliance estimates that there is a lack of around 250 police officers throughout the department, especially executives and officers.

"Haunting questions" for the victims

These very young police officers face a climate of daily violence, exposed during the trial at first instance.

"We really had a photo of what the weight of silence, the omerta, the strength of the bands, the heaviness in the neighborhoods", remembers at the microphone of Europe 1 Me Thibault de Montbrial.

If the situation has not changed at the Grande-Borne, the lawyer for Jenny, a police officer injured in the hands and the face, hopes that "the past time" could "crack" this omerta.

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For his client, “the impossible wait is to know why,” continues the lawyer. ”Why young people, some of whom were minors, were burned police officers in a car, blocked them while they were burning inside, then re-burned them - since there is a policeman who took a Molotov cocktail when it was already burning and he was getting out of the car -, and then cobbled them? What can justify that young people in a neighborhood come to attack the police in this way? These are haunting questions on a daily basis. "

"We avoid talking about it because we do not want to move the knife in the wound," testifies for his part Philippe, colleague and friend of another policeman, seriously burned in the attack.

"Regularly, it is reconstruction operation after reconstruction operation. (…) He cannot resume his activity for the moment."