police officers mobilize in support of their colleague under investigation

Police are mobilizing Monday, May 2 noon in forty cities in support of the police officer indicted in particular for “intentional homicide” after the death of two men during an intervention on April 24 on the Pont-Neuf in Paris.

In the capital, more than a hundred police officers gathered in front of the Saint-Michel fountain, a few meters from the scene of the events and the old courthouse, under a banner “get convicted or get killed”, found journalists from franceinfo on the spot. Loudspeakers broadcast rock music and orange and blue smoke bombs, in the colors of Alliance, have been lit.

“How can you think that a policeman gets up in the morning and says to himself ‘I’m going to kill someone’?”, asks Fabien Vanhemelryck, the secretary general of the Alliance police union, to a journalist from franceinfo. The demonstrators wave flags of the Alliance union and Unsa Police. The union of scientific police personnel is also on site. On placards hung from the Alliance union truck, pictures of a corpse, a coffin and a war memorial are printed below the phrase “it could have ended like this” and, for legend, “Do you have to be dead to recognize self-defense?”, “guilty of having saved his colleagues” or “legitimate defense for our colleague”.

As these signs indicate, Alliance is campaigning for the inclusion in law of a “presumption of self-defence” for the police and the gendarmes – one of the proposals of the candidates of the far-right parties in the presidential election of 2022. “It would be up to the victim to prove that there is an error and not to the police to justify themselves”, explained Rudy Manna, the departmental secretary of Alliance in the Bouches-du-Rhône, to France 3 Provence-Alpes-Côtes-d’Azur. The Marseille representative, who is taking part in a rally in front of the city’s judicial court, assures that he “does not at all question the indictment” of the policeman but he finds “unbearable that a police officer is indicted for murder, when he acted within the framework of his work, to protect himself as well as his colleagues”.

Shooting of the Pont-Neuf in Paris: 200 police officers gathered in front of the judicial court of Bordeaux to denounce the indictment “inadmissible” of the Parisian peacekeeper for intentional homicide. “The problem with the police is justice” (Alliance) pic.twitter.com/QbimuYByaO

– France Blue Gironde (@Bleu_Gironde) May 2, 2022

More than a hundred police officers gathered in front of the Bordeaux judicial court, reports France Bleu Gironde. About thirty also gathered Monday noon in front of the Lille courthouse, according to France Bleu Nord. They were about twenty in front of the police station in Cherbourg, according to France Bleu Cotentin and about fifty in Toulouse in front of the courthouse, according to France 3 Occitanie. Other gatherings were held on the forecourt of the police station in Strasbourg or even in Privas, indicate France Bleu Alsace and France Bleu Drôme Ardèche.

Demonstration of police at #Privas in #Ardeche. They denounce the indictment of their colleague, author of the fatal shots on the #New Bridge to #Paris on April 24. pic.twitter.com/fkBzhMLbiA

– France Bleu Drôme Ardèche (@francebleuDA) May 2, 2022

In Nantes, where a rally is taking place in front of the judicial court, the regional manager of the Alliance union confided, Monday, May 2 in the morning on France Bleu Loire Océan, that “When you do your job, you don’t expect, by being forced to use your weapon, to end up being indicted for murder”. He also recalled the “huge risk” that the police take for their own lives by intervening on the public highway.

All support the 24-year-old peacekeeper who is indicted for “intentional homicide” after the death of the driver of a vehicle during a police check on April 24, as well as for “intentional violence by a person holder of public authority resulting in death without intention to give it” with regard to the front passenger who also died and for “aggravated willful violence by a person holding public authority” with regard to the rear passenger who was injured, according to a judicial source from franceinfo.

In Paris, at the other end of the Place Saint-Michel, where they are nasse by the gendarmes, around thirty people take part in a counter-demonstration at the call of the Urgence collective, our police assassinate and several collectives who demand the truth for people who died during police intervention, according to a franceinfo journalist on the spot. They brandish red signs on which is written the slogan: “Alliance = union of police impunity”.

The founder of the Amal Bentounsi collective, whose brother died during a police intervention, denounces the “presumption of self-defence” at the microphone of franceinfo. “We can’t let this go”she proclaims, “it will be the door open to murders with impunity”. It also calls for the repeal or rewriting by the Constitutional Council of law L435-1 which allows police officers to use their weapons like gendarmes during roadside checks.

Two people were arrested and 51 fined during this counter-demonstration, which was not declared, the Paris police headquarters told franceinfo.