“It’s really essential to start cleaning up,” warns researcher Sébastian Roché

“On the BRAV-M, there is a file that is quite damning. It is really essential for the national police to start opening the lid and start cleaning up”alerted Friday March 24 on franceinfo Sébastian Roché, director of research at the CNRS, specialist in police and security issues, about an audio recording of about twenty minutes, which franceinfo was able to authenticate, where we hears several police officers from the Motorized Violent Action Repression Brigades (Brav-M) threatening and intimidating a group of individuals arrested and placed in police custody Monday evening in Paris, during a demonstration against pension reform.

franceinfo: What is your view of the audio recording of the arrest made by Brav-M?

Sebastian Roche: There is a kind of shadow theater that has been played up to now, where the President of the Republic had pretended to believe that there could be no police violence in a democracy. And we had heard a little bit the same words from the Paris police chief before Mr. Nuñez arrived. Mr. Nuñez had said that all the arrests are very legal, go very well.

“We have a mass of dysfunctions in the French police. And there, registration is the last straw. How can the administration, in the 21st century, at the era of Twitter and Facebook, continue to deny and arrive in front of the cameras with a big smile? It’s not possible.”

Sébastian Roché, research director at the CNRS

at franceinfo

And here, I think Laurent Nuñez is taking a step in the right direction, and perhaps starting to look at these dysfunctions.

Is it necessary to make a generalization of this type of facts? How to be certain that these are generalized practices and not isolated acts?

It is the rotten apple thesis that has always been put forward by police unions when they are in difficulty in France, but also in England, in the United States, which is not to look at the systemic nature of the problems . But today, with social media, we are able to share and learn, faster than the minister himself, the geography of the problems and the nature of the problems. We have dozens of pieces of evidence that we have never seen in the history of law enforcement observation. We have never known practices with such precision.

Is there a problem of contextualization? In general, these are excerpts from videos. Maybe that should also be taken into consideration?

Of course, everything has to be taken into consideration. And this will be the case at the time of the investigation which will not be carried out by an independent authority. The IGPN is an integral element of the Ministry of the Interior. She responds to the orders of the general manager, is appointed by the general manager, can be resigned by the general manager at any time. So it won’t be an independent investigation, unfortunately.

But you have to look at the number of malfunctions. He’s not a freaking person. And that can be completely understood. On the Brav-M, there is a file that is even quite damning. This is why some deputies are asking for their removal. So it’s really essential for the national police to start opening the lid and start cleaning up. For the credibility of the police, it is really essential. I hope that the police will renew positive contacts with citizens. And for that, she has to accept criticism. Maybe it’s something that starts now.

How to establish this contact when there are stones, violence, insults uttered against the police? Is it easy to keep your cool in such circumstances?

It’s not at all easy. The state, the government, puts the police between itself and the discontented population. So inevitably, in the event of a conflict, it is the police who serve as a buffer. And so it’s not easy at all. It absolutely must be recognized. But once we’ve said that, we have to look at what the countries that are doing better than us, for example the English, are doing. There have been huge crises. There were urban riots in 2011 which massacred central London. The reaction of the police in Great Britain was to say, how do I renew a constructive dialogue, how do I gain trust, and not how do I use more weapons to try to create more fear. So we really have two models: the police who want to gain trust, or the police who scare. It’s necessary to choose. I hope that the initiatives of the prefect of police will lead us in the direction of this police force which wants to gain confidence.