Val-d'Oise: three police officers indicted for violence on a young man

Three police officers were indicted for violence against a 19-year-old young man who received nearly thirty taser discharges during a check in January in Cormeilles-en-Parisis in Val-d'Oise, AFP learned on Tuesday from sources close to the investigation.

The three police officers of the Argenteuil proximity security group (GSP) were indicted for "willful violence by persons holding public authority" and placed under judicial control.

The head of the brigade who used the pistol was banned from practicing as part of his judicial review.

One fist and 27 taser shots

The facts took place on January 29 in a hall of a building, about twenty kilometers west of Paris. Five policemen from the Argenteuil GSP are on patrol when they meet a group of young people. They decide to control them. The latter flee but one of them is caught by a police officer.

His phone was searched and one of the members of the GSP came across a photo of a policeman from the BAC d'Argenteuil "in fishnet stockings and made up". The officer "gets angry" and "says 'do you like the police?' and gives me a shot of potato and 27 shots of taser ", testifies the young man to AFP. On his wound in the face, a police officer "pours hydroalcoholic gel and Doliprane powder" and "abandons" him in the hall of the building, says the victim still traumatized by the outburst of violence.

He is helped by his friends to return home.

The young man will go with his mother to the Argenteuil police station to file a complaint.

"We waited hours to take my complaint. The police made my mother believe that I was stupid", explains the young man.

"These are delinquents who have infiltrated the police"

The investigation showed that the electric pulse pistol used by the brigadier-in-chief was activated 27 times in ten minutes, according to a source familiar with the matter.

During a confrontation, "one of the police officers will confess and recognize the violence of his hierarchical superior", continues this source.

"What happened is unacceptable, deplores family lawyer Ian Knafou. There is violence committed by police officers who are dangerous individuals. These are delinquents who have infiltrated the police." According to the lawyer, "the difficulty in these cases is that the words of the victims of this violence have no weight: there is a presumption of lies in their words while there is a presumption of truth in that of the police". "If there had not been the testimony of the colleague (police officer) and the analysis of the taser, this case like all the others would have been closed without follow-up", regrets Me Knafou.