The day after the death of a police officer in Avignon on Wednesday, the profession denounces, Thursday, May 6, a State which "no longer protects its police", a "hatred" of the uniform which threatens the police in their "ordinary mission" , and seems to want to mobilize very soon.

"Police officers must be protected and today, it is clear that the state no longer protects its police officers," Frédéric Lagache, general delegate of the Alliance union, told AFP.

"We will act and react," he said, adding that his union organization would decide on an action within the day.

"We will not accept without reacting that colleagues are victims of their mission," he also said.

"There is both anger, despair and fatalism. We are in a dangerous spiral for democracy," said for his part to AFP, Grégory Joron, secretary general of SGP Police Unit.

Shot in broad daylight in the city center, the police pay with their lives for years of false struggle against drug trafficking in FRANCE.


When does it stop?


Heartfelt thoughts to Eric's family, colleagues and loved ones.

- SGP POLICE UNIT (@UNITESGPPOLICE) May 5, 2021

At the end of the day in Avignon on Wednesday, a police officer sent with his crew to the scene of a gathering around a deal point, was shot and killed by one of the people present.

The other police officers present retaliated, without being able to arrest the author who fled.

On Wednesday evening, the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin placed this drama in the context of "the fight against drug trafficking", which he said is like "a war".

"This war, we are waging it thanks to soldiers, (...) the police and gendarmes of France. Today, one of these soldiers died as a hero," he said.

"Ordinary hatred"

A rhetoric rejected by some members of the police.

"Yesterday it is not the war, (...) it is an ordinary mission" which reveals "the ordinary hatred" with which the police officers are confronted, judged Thursday morning on BFMTV David Le Bars, general secretary of the union of commissioners.

That a "little drug dealer" can shoot down a police officer "for a pocketbook or whatever, who would not even have taken him to prison (...), that says something other than the fight against narcotics . We have a subject of hatred and decomplexing violence, "he added.

A point of view shared by Yann Bastière, national delegate in charge of the investigation at Unity-SGP.

"This semantics is not really appropriate, we are not soldiers, we are not warriors, we do not wage a war on drugs. We are a civil security force, we are there to protect the citizens" , he told AFP.

"I don't see what is heroic in being shot like a dog in a street in Avignon."

"War cannot be fought in pajamas. If we wage war, it must be total and concern justice, education, health ... and not just the police," added Grégory. Joron, noting that we could "not empty the ocean with a teaspoon".

To illustrate the adaptation of the dealers, he mentioned the case in Limoges of offers of narcotics accompanied by a promise of reimbursement of the flat-rate fine to users who have been fined.

In Grenoble, he mentioned "loyalty cards".

With AFP

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