A police officer was indicted and placed under judicial control, suspected of having hit with a service car a scooter driven by three teenagers, injured in the accident, on April 13 in Paris, then to have changed his version of the facts.

Shortly before midnight, in the twentieth arrondissement of the capital, a scooter carrying three minors aged 17, 14 and 13, one without a helmet, was chased by a police car before falling.

The former presidential candidate denounced Sunday on BFM TV an "example of semantic reversal" because, according to him, "we make as usual delinquents victims and police officers aggressors".

"One was without a helmet" and, according to Mr. Zemmour, "they were doing rodeo, which is prohibited by law, and in addition they are in a hit-and-run," he charged, before acknowledging that the driver of the scooter was actually under investigation for "refusal to comply".

Asked about the method used, Mr. Zemmour is "in favor of what the English have been doing for a few months, what they call tactical contact" which allows the police to hit the vehicle pursued to fight against urban rodeos.

"I am in favor of changing the law and doing like the English," he insisted, assuring "that in England this kind of activity has decreased drastically."

"We urge the Paris prosecutor's office to open an investigation as soon as possible given the extreme seriousness of the remarks that can lead to such serious acts in the street and prosecute Mr. Zemmour," Arié Alimi, a lawyer for the families of the three injured teenagers, told AFP.

The lawyer announced that he would send the prosecutor's office on Monday a report or complaint for apology of crime.

In addition, Zemmour said he disagreed with Education Minister Pap Ndiaye, who said Friday that there were "phenomena" of police violence, "on which the "General Inspectorate" of the national police (IGPN) "is looking".

"There is etymologically no police violence," said the polemicist, since "the police have the monopoly of legitimate violence".

"It is not the police who commit violence, we commit violence against the police, that's the main thing today, it's the police officers who must be defended," he concluded.

© 2023 AFP