The civil parties follow one another at the bar. Some are on the verge of tears when they describe what they experienced in the Nancy Anti-Crime Squad (BAC). Nine police officers from this service are appearing on Thursday March 11 and Friday March 12, before the city’s criminal court, for moral harassment and racist insults towards four of their former colleagues. A tenth official is tried for “complicity in attacking the secrecy of correspondence”. He is accused of revealing the unlock code for the phone of one of the victims, Saïd.
I understood that they would never want me
He is the first to testify in a crowded courtroom. All seats are occupied many plainclothes police came attend the trial, whether they are close to the victims or the defendants. All are present. Saïd, the main victim in this case recounts his ordeal for almost two years, between 2017 and 2018. “When I arrived I tried to blend in with the group. I thought I would end up being accepted. But very quickly I understood that they would never want me”. He recounts the humiliations, his exclusion from the group: he was excluded from discussions, he was not invited to moments of conviviality.
He also happened to hear “I don’t want to be in the same group as the bougnoule”. A few weeks after his arrival, one of his colleagues with whom he had established links revealed to him the racist insults uttered against him in a discussion on the social network Messenger. He was called a “bicot” and a “bougnoule”, a “merguez eater”. According to Said, there were two leaders and followers. According to him, xenophobia and misogyny were trivialized and daily within this group. “I have seven years of BAC behind me, I have never seen that”.
I went to work with a lump in my stomach, they destroyed me
The floor was then given to the former head of the Nancy night BAC. This policeman who already has 15 years of experience in the day BAC, arrives in this service in 2017. He explains that he was flabbergasted when he saw the functioning of the service. He finds “extended breaks”, the police officers under his orders do not “proof of no will” and were”unmanageable“. He says that his deputy even went to him “soap the board”. Moved when reading the psychiatric expert report, “I had it”loose the 46-year-old man. “Police violence was not necessarily a myth within this service”, he adds.
Jenny, was the only woman in Nancy’s night BAC. She had no particular difficulties with her colleagues. But everything changed when she refused to participate in the harassment of a service officer. “I was going to work with a lump in my stomach, they destroyed me”, she confides. The victims all described the same mechanism: exclusion, isolation with one objective: to push them to the limit.
Cop described as ‘leader of the pack’ downplays
Only one defendant was heard on Thursday. Described as the main leader, he is the subject of four complaints. Uncomfortable at the helm, denied any ostracization and downplayed disagreements with his former colleagues, even claiming that he was “charged” to have a “strong character”. Regarding the exchanges on Messenger, he denied any desire to harm. “It wasn’t pretty, it was stupidity,” he pleaded.
The other defendants will be called to the bar on Friday, before the prosecutor’s requisitions and the lawyers’ pleadings. Judgment will no doubt be reserved. These police officers face two years in prison. The association SOS racism has brought a civil action in this case.