Municipal police officers in need of recognition in the streets throughout France

Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credit: THIBAUD MORITZ / AFP 5:56 p.m., February 3, 2024

From Lille to Marseille, hundreds of municipal police officers were heard blowing whistles on Saturday during rallies across France, to demand better recognition and no longer be considered “sub-police”. Katia Boudin, 45, police officer in Salon-de-Provence, was in the Marseille rally "to have recognition in the same way as the firefighters or the national police": "Because we go into contact with the population and we take the same risks,” she explained to AFP.

“Since 1999, we have not experienced any change in status and we see the town hall secretary moving to category B while we are still in C,” she said, among the approximately 500 demonstrators identified by the prefecture. from police.

“Show your anger”

In Paris, a few hundred people marched from Place de la République to City Hall, many wearing yellow "municipal police" vests sometimes crossed out with the inscription "on strike" or "angry". “Show your anger”, encouraged one of the representatives of the inter-union on the microphone: “It is not normal that in 2024 the municipal police will be considered as sub-police”. "We are demanding a status for municipal police officers, with a retirement worthy of the name, but also a real status for ASVPs (Editor's note: public highway surveillance agent)", demanded for his part Bertrand Debeaux, national FO PM representative from Lyon, where around a hundred agents were gathered.

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"We are often the first responders. In Nice, the police officer who put an end to the mass killing (Editor's note: at the Notre Dame de l'Assomption basilica, where on October 29, 2020 an undocumented Tunisian national stabbed three people ), it was a municipal police officer who was armed", recalls Jérôme Cellier, member of the office of the departmental association of municipal police officers from Gironde to Bordeaux (200 police officers mobilized). “What ignited the powder were the announcements by Elisabeth Borne (former Prime Minister) after the riots last summer: she spoke of broadening the skills and prerogatives of municipal police officers, but without that this is accompanied by additional recognition", analyzed Thiebault Parré, 46 years old, half of whom are in the municipal police force, present at the gathering in Strasbourg among some 160 agents.

“We are the police forces who remain at the lowest of the retirement grids,” continued Anne-Claire Cagninacci, 51, police officer in Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy (Meurthe-et-Moselle). Finally, in Lille, they For example, there were 150 brandishing a sign demanding “stop the contempt”. Their shrill whistles covered the speeches of another rally organized in front of the Northern prefecture in tribute to a baby who died of carbon monoxide poisoning, causing some tension.