The movement of “yellow vests” has notably reduced the confidence of the French population in its police.
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Damaged by cases of violence and racism, the image of the police has deteriorated with part of the population under the mandate of Emmanuel Macron, according to the latest barometer from the Center for Political Research at Sciences Po (Cevipof ).
The police remain appreciated by a very large majority of French people: in January, their level of confidence in the institution was measured at 72%, a level similar to that at the start of the five-year term (73%). But this apparent stability is only a sham if we consider the significant variations that have marked these five years, in particular a drop to 66% after the movement of “yellow vests” launched at the end of 2018.
For Jacques de Maillard, director of the Center for sociological research on law and penal institutions (Cesdip), “the quinquennium was marked by major crises in two essential facets of police work: maintaining order, with excessive use of force during the ‘yellow vests’, and everyday policing, with cases of racism and violent arrests, such as the Zecler affair”named after a black producer victim of police violence in Paris.
Distrust is sometimes more a matter of perception than experience: on average, only one in five French people say they have been in contact with the police over the past three years, according to Cevipof. The end of Emmanuel Macron’s five-year term was marked by a “stall” importance of the confidence of young people aged 18-24 in the police, especially in the Paris region: 70% of them express a “distrust” vis-à-vis the police, according to a Cevipof research note published in March 2021.