The highest administrative court was contacted by several associations last fall.
This is a setback for the Interior Ministry. The Council of State ordered it, Wednesday October 11, to make effective the obligation imposed on the police to wear their identification number in intervention, the RIO (identity and organization repository), and make it more visible.
“The Minister of the Interior did not take appropriate measures” in this sense, considers the highest administrative court in its judgment. Made up of seven digits, the RIO number must be “enlarged so that it is sufficiently readable, in particular when the police intervene during rallies or gatherings”. The Interior Ministry has 12 months to comply with its decision.
“A great legal victory”
It’s about “to promote relationships of trust between the internal security forces and the population and to ensure, in the interest of all, the identification of agents”, explains the Council of State. For him, “the regulations in force require that police officers and gendarmes wear, except in special cases justified by their missions, an individual identification number visible on their clothing.”
Considering that this obligation is poorly respected in practice, the League of Human Rights, the association Action des Chrétiens pour l’abolition de la torture, the Syndicat de la magistrature and the Union of Lawyers of France had contacted the Council of State in the fall of 2022. The Minister of the Interior had previously refused their requests to make the identification number more readable and its wearing more effective.
“It’s a great legal victory,” lawyer Patrice Spinosi, who represented the associations at the Council of State, told AFP. “The Council of State draws the consequences of the systematic absence of wearing the RIO during law enforcement operations, a phenomenon widely denounced and documented by the LDH”he added.