Accusations of police violence have invaded social networks lately. A new scandal erupted with the broadcast of the audio recording of the arrest of seven people, on the sidelines of a spontaneous rally in Paris against the pension reform on Monday March 20. We hear BRAV-M police officers insulting, threatening and beating demonstrators.
In this context, the Minister of the Interior wanted to recontextualize things. Friday March 24, Gérald Darmanin affirmed on Cnews that “the police and the gendarmes are the most sanctioned of all civil servants because they are particularly watched, because they have legitimate force, because they are armed and because they have a duty to set an example “.
Gérald Darmanin: “Yesterday we recorded 903 street furniture or garbage can fires in Paris, 457 arrests everywhere in France, 441 police officers and gendarmes injured” in #TheMorning pic.twitter.com/BI1bXgQ1u5
— CNEWS (@CNEWS) March 24, 2023
2,100 sanctions against the police, 2,800 against the gendarmes
The Minister of the Interior is telling the truth, at least with regard to the police within the State civil service. According to the latest annual report of the Ministry of Transformation and Public Service, 3,520 sanctions were pronounced against state officials in 2021. Among them, 2,162 targeted police officers, according to the 2021 report of the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN). In other words, two thirds of disciplinary sanctions in the State civil service are for police officers, so they are the most sanctioned.
The gendarmes being soldiers with a particular status, they are not part of this count of the State civil service. We still observe that the gendarmes, who are fewer in number than the police, receive more sanctions: 2,807 in 2021, according to the latest report from the General Inspectorate of the National Gendarmerie (IGGN).
However, these numbers have limitations. It should already be noted that the police are also the most armed state officials and the most likely to commit violence. In addition, it is not known whether police or gendarmes have been sanctioned several times. The number of reports of all state officials is not known, so it is not possible to say whether the police are the most reported officials or not, nor is it possible to know the proportion of reports that result in a sanction, and therefore whether the police institution is rather severe or rather lenient. Moreover, it is not possible to know what sanction is given for what breach. It is also not possible to compare the breaches and to know if the gendarmes have more sanctions than the police because they are guilty more or because the gendarmerie is more severe.
Fewer sanctions than in the 1990s
The detail of the sanctions of the gendarmes is not at all known, but the police force publishes that of the police officers. More than half of these are simple warnings (1,159) and a third of reprimands. According to figures published by Release , obtained after the newspaper won its case with the Commission for Access to Administrative Documents, the police institution issued only 200 temporary exclusions in 2021: 87 exclusions for one to three days, 5 for four to fifteen days and 96 for sixteen days to two years. There were few executives struck off (28), dismissals (34) and very few definitive exclusions (4).
These figures also show that sanctions against police officers rebounded in 2021, whereas they had been falling almost constantly since a peak of 3,423 disciplinary sanctions in 2008. To compare, 1,709 sanctions were pronounced in 2020, 1,678 in 2019, 2,030 in 2018, 2,070 in 2017. But if we go back further in time, we see that there are fewer administrative sanctions today than in the 1990s: 2 391 in 1990, 2,623 in 1991 or 2,336 in 1992.
Ten times more judicial investigations targeting police officers
The Minister of the Interior speaks only of administrative sanctions, because they make it possible to compare civil servants, but the police and the gendarmes are also targeted by sanctions and judicial inquiries. The police force explains in its report that it does not have the total number of criminal convictions targeting police officers throughout the national territory. The IGGN does not communicate this figure either.
In addition, the two institutions, IGPN and IGGN, are not seized of all the legal cases which concern police officers and gendarmes. But we note all the same that the IGGN carried out 111 judicial investigations involving the gendarmes in 2021, ten times less than the IGPN which was seized of 1,093 charges against the police the same year. A globally stable figure, apart from the year 2019 when seizures had increased sharply during the movement of “yellow vests” (1,460 judicial investigations carried out by the IGPN).
The police force which has been seized of 17 judicial investigations since the start of the mobilization against the pension reform on January 19.