several demonstrators against the pension reform denounce police violence

An investigation was opened on Tuesday March 21 by the Paris prosecutor’s office and entrusted to the IGPN after the broadcast of a video shot during a demonstration Monday evening against the pension reform in Paris. We see a demonstrator violently hit in the face by a policeman. For several days, dozens of videos of this kind have been circulating on social networks and deputies and magistrates have denounced police violence.

>> INFO FRANCEINFO. Pension reform: three LFI deputies demand the dissolution of Brav-M from Gérald Darmanin

“Free and extremely violent” baton blows

These demonstrators who denounce violence perpetrated by the police all have more or less the same story: a rather calm procession and suddenly the violent intervention of the police. Gabin, 18, paraded with a friend on Monday evening: “I was beaten with a truncheon in the face and on my right cheek, in my leg. I have a bruise, but I was relatively lucky to have a big down jacket. My friend, he, s He took a lot of beatings with truncheons, including one, at the end, in the skull. He had his skull cut open. I was stunned for about thirty minutes, I went into an anxiety attack. My friend who had his head cut open was crying, he did not understand what was happening. It was gratuitous and extremely violent.”

The same evening, another demonstrator whom we will call Claire also recounts having been tackled by a police officer and then violently beaten: “I had my face against the kiosk, so I couldn’t see what was happening behind me. But there was one who actually gave me a good blow with a baton in the stomach. relentlessness and honestly, there was no reason.”

Blows and a dislocated shoulder: 10 days of ITT

This gratuitous relentlessness that Claire denounces, a man claims to have experienced it that same evening, Monday. Still shocked by what he experienced, he wants to remain anonymous. He tells of an outburst of violence. “I was in the rue de Rivoli and I followed the demonstration from afarsays this tradesman, who came to attend, he said, as a simple spectator at the demonstration. I was there out of curiosity, at the back of the procession. At one point, Brav-M police arrived on motorcycles and charged. I drifted away a bit. They beat up a young girl across the street, I was watching the scene from afar. Suddenly, two Brav-Ms came at me on foot. I felt they were going to charge me, but I had nothing to complain about. I didn’t move, they ran towards me, shouting: ‘What’s in your bag?’ I raised my arms and said they could look in the bag. One of the policemen looked around, there was almost no one there, and there he gave me a big punch in the jaw. His colleague also hit me and hit me with a truncheon.”

>> Demonstrations and policing: “We have fallen back into a logic of confrontation”, explains a specialist in police and security issues

Other Brav-M policemen then run towards him. “They start knocking me to the ground, with knees brutally in the head, kicks, from all sides. Then a policeman either gave me an armbar or he put all his weight on my shoulder, until he dislocated my shoulder.”

“I let out a terrified scream. I thought this was going to go on forever, that they were going to finish me.”

A seller

at franceinfo

According to him, “At one point, the police calmed down. The captain, who was older than the others, arrived. I explained that I couldn’t get up because of my shoulder. He told me that I was doing from the cinema. He pulled me. They searched my backpack and they found nothing but a neck warmer because I ride a bike. They threw my bag on the ground. The captain said: ‘ You’re lucky we were nice to you this time. Next time we’ll be really mean’.” The police leave and leave him there. “Fortunately, a witness helped me. I couldn’t pick up my bag, I had a dislocated or dislocated shoulder. He helped me take a taxi to the Hôtel-Dieu hospital. I had ten days of ITT [Incapacité totale de travail]. I have a splint, and still a lot of pain. I also have a bruise in my jaw, and also pain behind the skull.”

The man still doesn’t understand “what happened” : “I haven’t slept all night. I’ve been doing the scene all night long. I’m in shock, it’s surreal what happened to me. I was beaten up by five guys, c “were beasts. At no time did I try to run or struggle. I got beat up for free…”

Young women “arrested without any reason”

Another testimony, that of Aesa, a 23-year-old student. She does not claim to be the victim of violence, but of abusive arrest. Sunday evening, she demonstrates with a friend in the streets of Paris. The atmosphere is good-natured, she says. No fire, no violence. However, around 8 p.m., the two young women find themselves blocked in a street by the police, then embarked in a van with ten other young women. “At the police station, they were all a little overwhelmed to have us. They knew very well that we had done nothing, that there was no basis. In fact, the police officers we see tell us: ‘ It’s ridiculous, it’s going to be dismissed, it makes no sense, we have better things to do with our days.’ They all knew that we were there for no reason, that we hadn’t done anything badly. 100% of the girls who were with us were arrested for the first time. We all experienced it as an injustice and it’s really just arbitrary, to make numbers, to impress, and at the same time to intimidate the demonstrators by saying: the simple fact of going to demonstrate can put you in situations where you are deprived of your liberty for about twenty hours.

Aesa and the other young women between the ages of 17 and 35 were all released without charge. Among them, demonstrators, but also a baccalaureate who left her exams, a student who returned home, another who left the cinema. Several are currently considering filing a collective complaint to denounce this arrest. Héloïse was part of the group. “We came out of it both shocked and angry. First police custody for everyone, we didn’t know how it worked. And also a misunderstanding. A police officer even said to one of our comrades: ‘It saddens me to take your fingerprints, I feel like I’m doing that to my daughter.’ Perhaps that’s what’s most chilling, it’s to realize that the police officers opposite were perfectly aware of what was going on, that they had no problem telling us openly that they found it revolting. The second thing that my judicial police officer said to me after ‘Hello’, was: ‘Frankly, the reasons of your arrest are non-existent”. In the group, several of us came to demonstrate peacefully, but there is also one who was leaving the cinema, a high school student who was taking her baccalaureate, another who had her exams on Monday while she was in police custody. All these young girls who were arrested without cause, what an image el are they going to have the police afterwards? And what are they generating among young people at a time when it is increasingly difficult to trust our institutions and to trust the police.”

Several observers also denounce massive arrests. A figure sums up the situation well between Thursday and Saturday, 425 people were arrested in Paris, but only 42 were presented to a judge. That’s one in ten on average. Several lawyers contacted by franceinfo tell us that they have assisted in police custody of simple passers-by, tourists or Parisians who were just walking in the street and who found themselves in a police cell for several hours, for no reason. The Syndicate of the Judiciary and even the Defender of Rights have also stepped up to the plate. But for the prefect of police of Paris, Laurent Nuñez, questioned Wednesday morning on France Info, there was in Paris no abusive arrest. And he assures that “ILaw enforcement only intervenes when abuses are committed”.