The Interior Ministry’s strategy against urban rodeos “does not change drastically” after the Minister’s announcements to increase the number of checks in August, according to the deputy secretary of the SGP Police-FO Unit union Jérôme Moisant. “Even if there are more controls, the fact that rodeos are random events will make them ineffective”he says on franceinfo Monday, August 8.
While Minister Gérald Darmanin asked the prefectures to carry out 10,000 checks in August against 8,000 over the past two months, Jérôme Moisant judges that these are rather “the colleagues who will come across an urban rodeo during their service in an untimely manner and who will have to, with their small means, try to put an end to the offense and then identify the perpetrators”. The vehicles are, according to him, already confiscated “in the vast majority of cases”.
The best method of struggle remains, for the trade unionist, the identification of the perpetrators, noting that “Crews can often recognize them because they know the area well”better than the video surveillance of which the investigation services “do not have the ability” to analyze all the images. He does not defend the aggravation of the legal arsenal already in place against urban rodeos and proposes instead to apply “the penalties that are in place”, considering that they are sufficiently dissuasive if respected. In 2018, the law was strengthened and the penalty can go up to 5 years in prison for the perpetrators of this offense.
About “tactical clash” (technique of the police forces which consists in hitting the vehicle of the offenders to stop them) set up for three years in the United Kingdom, Jérôme Moisant does not consider it relevant today. “We do not think that, legally and in the current state of the texts in France, tactical shock is a solution” against urban rodeos.
Jérôme Moisant pleads for real legal protection for colleagues: “We do not want [qu’un policier] be prosecuted because one of the offenders was injured following contact”noting that this technique “may cause injury”. In France, the police are asked to avoid engaging in a chase so as not to cause injury.
Already last May, Gérald Darmanin announced an intensification of controls. For two months, 8,000 police operations have led to 1,200 arrests and 700 seizures of vehicles, according to the minister. On Friday, two children were seriously injured during an urban rodeo in Pontoise, in Val-d’Oise. These two children, an 11-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl, were hit by a motocross around 9:30 p.m. They were playing tag in the Hauts de Marcouville district.