Hearing in the Senate on the violence that followed the death of young Nahel, the Minister of the Interior provoked the anger of certain police officers by mentioning their low level of studies… Before explaining himself, a few days later.
A sentence that caused a lot of reaction. A few days after his hearing in the Senate, on July 5, on the management by the police of the violence following the death of Nahel, this teenager killed by police fire in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine), Gérald Darmanin came under fire from critics. In question: his remarks on the training of the police.
“Is it better to select the police? Certainly”replied the Minister of the Interior to the socialist senator from Paris, Marie-Pierre de La Gontrie, before continuing: “I am at the head of a ministry where, apart from the police commissioners, those whom we recruit are often children, to use your word, 18, 19, 20 years old, who have not done any very advanced studies. I am not at the head of the Ministry of Justice, where people take competitive exams for bac +4, or bac +5, or at National Education, where people are very poorly paid elsewhere, like the police, but finally, they have a very important social capital.”
This extract initially went unnoticed, before being massively relayed, two days later, on the account of an Internet user posing as a police officer on Twitter, where it was seen more than 2 million times. The controversy grew as the sequence was shared, in particular by members of the police force but not only, via the hashtags #TousCrétinsdeDarmanin or #Balancetonbac. All are very critical of this exit from the minister, regretting what they perceive as a form of contempt.
Comments deemed “clumsy”
The peacekeeper competition is open to anyone holding a baccalaureate or an equivalent level diploma. That of officer requires a baccalaureate +3, while the competition of police commissioner requires a baccalaureate +5. According to INSEE statistics, published in 2021, category B personnel, including officers – peacekeepers, brigadiers, brigadiers-chefs and police majors – of the national police, as well as non-commissioned officers gendarmerie, represent 83% of the 224,000 police officers and gendarmes employed in France. Agents in categories A and A+, including commissioners and police officers, represent 7% of the workforce. The remaining 10% are non-tenured category C personnel, i.e. security assistants and volunteer assistant gendarmes.
Quickly, police unions positioned themselves on the subject, such as Alternative Police CFDT, which judged in a tweet that these words were “offensive”, ensuring that “many police officers are overqualified compared to the competition” and that one “diploma cannot be the only criterion for making a valuable policeman”. Matthieu Vallet, deputy national secretary of the Independent Union of Commissioners (SICP), also believes “that these statements are very clumsy and have hurt many police officers”, even if, in his remarks, Gérald Darmanin made a distinction between the level required to be a commissioner and for the other grades.
In a communicated vitriol published on July 9, the National Association of Judicial Police (ANPJ) said “outraged and strongly condemns these statements”. “What contempt and what ignorance of the men he leads! Such remarks bring shame on an entire profession”, she denounced. On Twitter, another hashtag also accompanied the video of the Minister of the Interior: #GoodByePJ, in reference to the highly contested reform of the judicial police desired by Gérald Darmanin. The ANPJ was also created during the summer of 2022, to bring together the police opposing it.
Fabrice Fagnani, zonal secretary on the CRS side within Unit-SGP Police FO, also acknowledges to franceinfo that these comments were “very clumsy”but nuance: “The minister is not in the wrong, however” because “many pass the police entrance examination just after the baccalaureate”.
“Will the level of education make you a good or a bad policeman?”
Thierry Clair, deputy secretary general of Unsa-Police, shares his observation. “Indeed, very young colleagues enter the police without academic or professional experience: it’s their first job, it’s a reality”, he observes with franceinfo. But he also explains that“there are many overqualified police officers, with a bac +3, bac +4 school level, who are officers or peacekeepers”.
For Fabrice Fagnani, the problem is not having young police officers: “Imposing recruitment at bac +2 would not change much in terms of maturity.” The real question, according to him, is rather: “Will the level of education make you a good or a bad policeman?”
“On a PV, if you forget an ‘s’ or ‘t’, you are not bad. The main thing is to have motivated officials.”
Fabrice Fagnani, zonal secretary within the Unit-SGP Police FOat franceinfo
“I know a lot of police officers who have not passed the officer competition, when they would have done the job”, notes the trade unionist. And to continue: “You would recruit at CAP level, some would be very good”, specifying “that experience counts enormously to be comfortable on the pitch”. It is for this reason, according to him, that “we must stop putting the least experienced young people in the most difficult sectors, for which they are not sufficiently prepared”.
Thierry Clair also believes that the subject is not so much the age of entry into the police as training, rejoicing in passing that the initial training of peacekeepers has increased from eight to twelve months, on the decision of Gérald Darmanin in 2021. “There is aeficit of continuous training, the emphasis must be placed on the recruitment of trainers and more situational training on intervention techniques, in particular concerning shooting”, he points out.
Gérald Darmanin explains himself
Traveling to the National Police School (ENP) in Oissel, near Rouen (Seine-Maritime), on Tuesday July 11, the Minister of the Interior agreed with this finding of an urgent need to improve the training of policemen. He returned at length to his speech to the senators and also gave an interview on the subject to the online media Actu17. “SIf words have hurt and been misinterpreted, I regret them”, he said, recalling being himself “from a very modest background, without a great diploma“. “If we had a minimum of intellectual honesty, we would realize that the whole hearing is obviously very strong support for the national police”continued Gérald Darmanin, regretting having been judged on “46 seconds” After “1h26” passed in the Senate.
The Minister nevertheless maintains that the police “have studied less than their other civil servant colleagues”recalling that“You need at least a baccalaureate level +4” to pass the judicial examinations. “It is, therefore, an additional responsibility of their administration, to train them more”he insisted, regretting “only 60% of police officers” do “their three annual shooting sessions”.
The tenant of Place Beauvau also said he wondered about the current police academy entrance examination, claiming to prefer “oral to written to better understand the motivations” and suggesting the need to put in place “a work of accompaniment to determine what type of police officers we want, rather than only developing techniques that they will then learn at the police academy.”