The sensitive subject of facial checks is being studied on Friday by the Council of State. It was contacted by six NGOs and associations, represented by Maître Antoine Lyon-Caen, who proposed on franceinfo the delivery of a receipt to the person checked.
The Council of State must “recognize that the State has failed in its obligations by allowing this practice of facial checks to develop”, declared Friday September 29 on franceinfo Maître Antoine Lyon-Caen, lawyer at the Council of State and the Court of Cassation. He represents the six NGOs and associations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch which seized the highest administrative jurisdiction in 2021, so that “these illegal controls disappear”. Master Lyon-Caen mentioned a “culture of facial controls” aiming “blacks and Arabs or those who are supposed to be such”. The Council of State is considering this very sensitive subject on Friday.
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Me Lyon-Caen denounces “a scourge”. According to him, this “group action aims to offer the judge the possibility of enjoining [à l’État] to take measures, monitor the execution of the measures and possibly impose fines” because “in the law, an arsenal of measures that can be taken by the judge himself”.
According to him, giving a receipt to the person checked is a solution to “frame them” And “sanction slippages”. He deplores too much opacity surrounding these controls. “We do not know the practice of controls because they are without tracesdeplores this lawyer Even the Interior Ministry admits that it knows nothing.”
“A fear of a sort of police revolt”
This lawyer “understands anger, revolt” victims of facial checks. “We must recognize – because all this is documented – that these people, and even from the age of twelve, their vision of authority is the one who controls them once a day, once a week. Authority public authority has become the one that oppresses them because the first contact with the public authority is the contact with this police officer who carries out a check for no reason.
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These six associations and NGOs are taking legal action because the political authorities are not addressing this issue. “The last two presidents of the Republic recognized the seriousness of the problem and this was not followed up”, deplores Me Antoine Lyon-Caen. Because according to him, there is a “fear of a sort of police revolt”.
The State condemned for “gross misconduct” in 2021
On January 27, 2021, these same associations and NGOs (Community House for Solidarity Development, Pazapas, Anti-discrimination Equality Network Interdisciplinary Justice, Amnesty International France, Human Rights Watch and Open Society Justice Initiative) had put the State on notice, requesting the end of these checks based on the appearance of the person and deemed discriminatory. They denounced “a humiliating, degrading practice”.
The French State has been criticized several times for allowing the crime of facial appearance to continue during police checks. For example, on June 8, 2021, the Paris Court of Appeal condemned the State for “gross negligence” due to the discriminatory identity checks to which three high school students had been subjected in a Parisian train station in 2017 while they were returning from a school trip.