“In the moment, it’s really a very complicated decision to make“For the policeman to shoot or not when he refuses to comply, explained Thursday, September 8 on franceinfo Frédéric Veaux, director general of the national police. “It’s never the police who are at the origin of what happens“, he says. Since the beginning of the year, 9 people have been killed by police fire after refusing to comply, according to a count on Thursday from franceinfo. A report that includes the last two fatal shots that took place this Wednesday in Rennes during an anti-drug operation and in Nice in the afternoon.
>> Refusal to comply: more than 26,000 offenses in 2021, 9 deaths since the start of the year… What the official statistics say
franceinfo: Are the French police drawing too quickly?
Frederic Calves : Absolutely not, the French police are increasingly confronted with situations in which they are obliged to implement means to protect themselves, defend themselves or put an end to a certain number of offences. It’s not for me to comment on the cases that happened yesterday [un refus d’obtempérer à Rennes et un autre à Nice] and which are the subject of judicial inquiries under the authority of the competent public prosecutors. But it is never the police who are at the origin of what is happening.
Since 2017, the police can shoot if they believe that “the person in front of them risks attacking third parties in their flight”, says the law. Isn’t that too blurry?
Absolutely not. The legal frameworks are specified in the text of the internal security code. The only difficulty is operational. When you are on the pitch you have a quarter of a second to react, to decide what to do. I myself was confronted in my professional life with a situation which led me to open fire. It is an extremely difficult situation. It’s always easier to analyze, to decipher after the facts have been committed, but in the moment, it’s really a very complicated decision to make with a certain number of parameters that come into play.
Regarding Nice’s refusal to comply, we see that the policeman shoots the driver while the car seems to be stationary. Was there a danger?
I can’t speak to this particular case. In a case like this and as in others, it is the action as a whole that must be analysed. What happened before, in the environment, the perception that the police could have of it at the time of the intervention. It is really a difficult and complex investigation and I think that the public prosecutor will have the opportunity to speak. I happened to go to the funerals of police officers who had been killed as a result of refusing to comply. These are really very complex situations and I will be careful not to judge the way things happen in the heat of the moment.