The two national police officers are still tested Tuesday, October 18 in the morning when they appear at the bar. Magali’s voice breaks from her first words. In 2016, this peacekeeper was 33 years old. Eleven years in business. Clément, he was a baby, as he says, 22 years old at the time, and only six months in the field as a contract security guard. He is now a peacekeeper.
On July 14, 2016, both are in the same crew. A crew of three policemen on the Promenade des Anglais. They tell one after the other what happened that night. Right after the fireworks, Clément hears a cross-hatched message on his radio. A truck crossed a roadblock says this message. A message that does not reach Magali, because her radio is broken. She only sees the movement of the crowd, the panicked people running and escaping. The police, on the other hand, go towards the Promenade des Anglais and go up it in the opposite direction. That evening, 86 people died in the attack and hundreds more were injured.
The truck is coming from their right. Magali mimics the gesture of the driver. He takes a gun and shoots them. Clément remembers the window breaking and the sparks. At that moment, the agents remain petrified, frozen. Then they rush behind the truck. “We see people, bodies coming off the wheels, being thrown“, says the policewoman, wiping her tears. When the truck stops, Magali arrives at the cabin. She shoots the terrorist.
After this shooting, each of the agents goes to the aid of the victims with a feeling of helplessness described by Magali and Clément. He gives himself up on Tuesday morning: “I held people at gunpoint with my weapon. I was screaming at them to get out with mad rage“. They feared that terrorists would appear on the promenade from elsewhere. At the helm, the policeman apologized to this person whom he pointed with his weapon. People who were probably looking for their relatives and who found themselves in front of a policeman who threatens them.
“Did this safety device seem usual and sufficient to you?“, asks the president to Magali, the more experienced of the two in 2016.”It was always like that“, answers the peacekeeper. It was not the first time that she participated in the security of July 14, and it was, according to her, the same device all the time, with five national police crews. On the Euro football just before, there was however a big tension, a big device to precisely avoid an attack. After the competition, “it was a big relief“, she explains. For July 14, “finally, when we see the result, obviously, we say to ourselves that it was too light“, regrets the policewoman.
The president asks him about his training received after the attacks in 2015.”We did exercises, for example indoors like Bataclan“, explains Magali. “To stop a truck, we can do all the training we want, it won’t change anything“, she continues. The two police officers also come back to the problem with the faulty radios that Magali was telling, “an recurring problem“, according to her. She had also reported it, it had annoyed him given the consequences, she says again. The radios in Nice were changed afterwards. He has since come to Paris and in his judicial police service today, he still has these same radios with breakdowns.