Serious police misconduct: towards faster enforcement of disciplinary sanctions

The boss of the national police, Frédéric Veaux, asked at the end of July that the disciplinary sanctions against the police officers found guilty of serious misconduct be more quickly implemented, according to a note consulted Monday by AFP. "Delays that are too long to sanction serious wrongdoing are not acceptable and can be detrimental to the image of the police institution. It is therefore necessary to ensure that they are reduced and controlled", writes the director general of the national police (DGPN) in this document dated July 27.

This letter was sent to the prefects a week after the

had revealed that the police officer who took the complaint of Chahinez Daoud against her violent husband, before the latter burned her alive on May 4 in Mérignac, had been sentenced three months earlier for "intra-family violence". 

The national police had specified that "an administrative investigation had been opened as soon as the wife of the police officer had lodged a complaint".

Following this investigation, the official was the subject of a "request for referral to a disciplinary board", "which has not yet been held," said the national police.

A period of seven months 

Between 2018 and 2020, the time between the end of the administrative investigation and the execution of the sanction against a police officer caught at fault was on average seven months, including "two and a half months" to write the minutes of the council. discipline and forward it to the human resources department, according to this note.

"The disciplinary boards will now have to meet within two months of the conclusion of the administrative investigation," writes Frédéric Veaux. 

"The opinion of the disciplinary council and the minutes of the meeting must then be sent (...) within one month" to the human resources department so that it can "respond more quickly to the disciplinary files ", he concludes.