The Republican deputy Eric Ciotti, support of Valérie Pécresse in the presidential election, encourages the idea of reducing the number of civil servants. While he was discussing, Sunday, January 2 on LCI, with the Minister for the Transformation of the civil service Amélie de Montchalin, the latter reminded him that the decline in civil servants had led to the elimination of 12,000 police and gendarmes posts under the mandate of Nicolas Sarkozy. To this argument, Eric Ciotti retorted that “in any case at the time, there were more police officers on the ground, more efficiency, a higher rate of elucidation”. Eric Ciotti assured that his finding was taken from a report from the Court of Auditors. This is indeed the case.
A report by the Court of Auditors with the evocative title was indeed made public in November 2021. Title “The management of human resources at the heart of the difficulties of the national police”, this report indicates in summary that, despite the increase in the resources allocated to the police for ten years, the performance is not there. On some points, the situation has even deteriorated. The report notes, for example, that despite a 21% payroll increase since 2011, the police presence rate shows “a continuous decline”. Thus, it went from 39% to 37% between 2011 and 2021.
In detail, however, this report indicates that the workforce has not increased in the same way in all departments. If they actually increased by 31% in the foreigners and air transport police, on the contrary they fell by 10% in the security and public peace services.
The magistrates of the Court of Auditors note that “the reinforcement plans have not made it possible to improve the exercise of police missions by due competition”. As well, “the elucidation rates, even if they constitute an imperfect indicator, are indicative of the difficulties in dealing with offenses by local judicial services”, they indicate.
Concretely, the rate of elucidation of burglary cases has stagnated around 10% for 5 years. It even declined with regard to homicides, dropping from 67% of cases resolved in 2015 against 62% in 2020. The clearance rate for cases of violent theft has, however, increased from 10.8% to 15.4% between 2015 and 2020.
This disappointing performance in view of the increase in the resources allocated, the Court explains in particular by an organization of the work of the police officers who “despite recent reforms, remains unsuitable” operational needs. “The recent work of the Court on the subject converges towards the idea that the solution to the insufficiency of these performances lies above all in a better use and a renewed management of the human resources of the national police”, indicate the magistrates.
In particular, they recommend an allocation of staff that “would benefit from being rethought”, an organization of work that should be “adapted to the needs” and training that should be “strengthened and modernized”.