The policeman presented to an examining magistrate, Sunday October 16, after a refusal to comply in Paris was indicted for “willful violence resulting in death without intention to give it”, learned Sunday evening franceinfo from the lawyer for police officer Laurent-Franck Liénard. According to a close source, the policeman is prohibited from possessing a weapon and from exercising his profession. He also has a duty of care.
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For his lawyer, the qualification of voluntary violence having caused death without intention to give it is “normal”. What the “shock”on the other hand, it is the indictment: “Police officers have the right to use their weapons in these types of events and circumstances and in principle they should not be indicted. So we will challenge it.” Laurent-Franck Liénard therefore wishes to appeal the judicial review order on Monday and file a motion for nullity in the coming weeks.
Still according to his lawyer, he is a very young, inexperienced policeman faced with a refusal to comply: “In this case, what is difficult to manage is when the driver can no longer leave and, to do so, he rushes into the police. There, it is no longer a refusal to comply, It’s attempted homicide.” In this kind of situation, the lawyer points out the fact that you have to act quickly: “What is hard to manage is that you have to save the colleague and the passers-by. That is what is difficult for this young policeman”. And the lawyer continues: “To try to do something, he only has his service weapon. He is therefore obliged to apply fire to a man and, for a young policeman, it is terribly traumatic. He did not go into the police to shoot people.”
More generally, Laurent-Franck Liénard notes that there are more and more cases of opening fire on refusals to comply: “We still have as many openings of frenzied fire or on attackers with knives, but we talk about it less. We focus on refusals to comply and we create a bit of a fashion phenomenon. But it is also true that there is an upsurge in violence against the police.” For him, this is explained by the“collapse of the authority represented by the police and therefore, more and more, people who do not want to stop run into the police”. Actions that concern him: “This defiance of authority and violence against those in authority is starting to take on truly worrying proportions.”