The petition has reached nearly 250,000 signatures. Published on March 23 on the platform of the National Assembly, the text calls for “the dissolution of the Brav-M”, the brigade for the repression of motorized violent action. This police unit made up of mobile duos traveling on motorcycles is at the heart of a controversy fueled in particular by the revelation of an audio recording. We hear several police officers have a very raw language towards demonstrators. Regularly criticized for their methods of intervention in demonstrations, often considered brutal, the Brav-M are nevertheless appreciated by the authorities, who praise their ability to contact the thugs and to arrest them. Originally planned to intervene punctually on demonstrations of yellow vests, the brigade now occupies a prominent place in the law enforcement scheme of the Paris police headquarters (PP).
The Brav-Ms weren’t always called that. The day after the degradation of the Arc de Triomphe during Act III of the yellow vests, on December 1, 2018, the prefect of police at the time, Michel Delpuech, decided to create the Dard, namely the “detachments of ‘rapid action and deterrence’. These units, duos of police officers traveling on motorcycles, are designed to be able to go quickly from one point to another in the capital, and to arrest any thugs. “After the events of December 1, this initiative seemed essential to me: the forces intended for the maintenance of traditional order, such as the CRS and the mobile gendarmes, had neither the mobility nor the agility necessary to face to dispersed demonstrators and showing violence”, underlines with L’Express Michel Delpuech, today Councilor of State in extraordinary service.
The Stings come with a change in policing doctrine: no more simple “distancing.” The police are called upon to go more into contact with the thugs. “These units are a means of mobility, used only for travel and the police had to imperatively dismount to intervene”, indicates Christophe Castaner, Minister of the Interior at the time.
A “more powerful tool”
The Dard are made up of agents from the public order and traffic department (DOPC) but also from the anti-crime brigade (BAC), considered more effective for arrests by the prefecture of the time. However, their existence was short-lived: it ended a few months later, in March 2019, when the prefect of police was dismissed. The deployment of the Dard will not have prevented the ransacking of the Champs-Elysées on the sidelines of the eighteenth Saturday of mobilization of yellow vests. In Beauvau, Christophe Castaner regrets the “inhibition” of the police and CRS and a law enforcement strategy “not implemented”. Michel Delpuech is replaced by Didier Lallement, who already has the reputation of being a tough prefect. “The Dard had been put in place in a hurry. These units were not numerous enough, and, above all, it was a mistake to build them with people from the BAC, who are not trained in maintaining the ‘order’, says a former member of the prefecture, close to Didier Lallement.
On March 23, 2019, the creation of the Brav-M was announced. “Prefect Lallement wanted a more efficient and effective tool to manage the problem of violence in Paris, and especially the dispersal of crowds”, recalls a senior officer of the gendarmerie. The head of the DOPC takes the opportunity to whisper his ideas in the ear of the senior official. “The concept of the Brav-M was essentially pushed from this place, in particular by Alexis Marsan, its deputy director, on whom most of the maintenance of order in Paris rested for several years”, wants to believe our officer.
“Proven operational efficiency”
Units are ramping up. To recruit, the prefecture very quickly promotes unity… even if it sometimes seems to have difficulty in encouraging vocations. “Faced with the lack of interest in the use of Brav-M, the PP wishes to review the choices of assignment of motorcyclist trainees” and thus promote “reinforcement of staff” within the brigade, indicates a Facebook post of the SGP Police FO Unit union dated October 2020. At present, “each intervention company – there are six of them a day – has two sections trained and authorized Brav-M”, indicates the prefecture of police. The sections being composed of 18 people, the strength of the brigade therefore amounts to 216 people. “People trained in maintaining order and who practice it every day,” insists the PP.
As soon as they were set up, the Brav-Ms seemed to be well regarded within the police, in particular by the Alliance union, which is in the majority within the police. On a Facebook post from September 2020, theorganization also asks “their development in view of their proven operational effectiveness”. Questioned on the subject of the maintenance of order in a parliamentary committee, the trade unionists of Alliance do not hesitate to praise the merits of a brigade “whose heroic deeds need not be recalled, since they are the ones who made it possible to ‘stem the waves of thugs and correctly carry out dozens of arrests’, as theindicates at the same time to the Assembly Loïc Traversnational secretary of Alliance Ile-de-France.
The current director of the DOPC, Jérôme Foucaud – in office since March 2019, at the exact moment of the establishment of the Brav-M – communicates extensively on the brigade. On LinkedIn, the senior official does not hesitate to show the units in action: sharing “on-board” items with the Brav-Ms, videos on the unit on exercise in NîmesOr still on patrol at La Courneuve.
Swiss knife
“The Brav-M were perceived from the outset almost as a kind of” absolute weapon “against the degradations committed by very mobile and increasingly organized groups, even beyond the demonstrations of the yellow vests”, explains Mathieu Zagrodzki, researcher associated with a CNRS laboratory and Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines University, specializing in internal security and the police. From ad hoc brigades, these units end up being employed in a variety of situations. “We were able to use them occasionally on missions relating to public order disturbances, sometimes in the suburbs, in places where we needed to go quickly”, explains our former PP. The Brav-M becomes a “Swiss army knife” of the police headquarters.
But these units have their limits. They are quickly singled out for their method, judged violent and disproportionate from the start by the yellow vest demonstrators. Several IGPN investigations are launched after accusations of police violence. Recently, on Monday March 20, the Brav-M was pinned in a video showing police officers from the brigade, authenticated by The world, threatening and assaulting a young man in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris. Enough to feed an image of urban “cowboys”, reinforced by the parallels regularly drawn with the former voltigeurs, a police unit created in 1969 and dissolved in 1986, following the death of Malik Oussekine. The 22-year-old student had been chased by three police officers on motorbikes, before being beaten by at least two of them in a building lobby.
A dissolution “not on the agenda”
Wishing to keep them away from this image, the authorities regularly remind us that, unlike acrobats, Brav-M police officers can neither arrest nor use any weapon when they are on a motorcycle. The machine should only serve them as a means of locomotion, the rest of the intervention taking place on foot. But the vaunted speed of this brigade is also its best enemy: on a two-wheeler, it is impossible to take with you, for example, protective equipment similar to the huge shields of the CRS. “The use of Brav-M is a double-edged sword: the agents are effective because they are able to move around and put a stop to a disturbance of public order very quickly. But they can also be quickly put in difficulty. They do not have substantial protective equipment, which can lead them to make a disproportionate use of force”, analyzes our senior officer of the gendarmerie, before explaining: “If you are going to maintain order without much protection and you are taken to task, after two or three stones, the response becomes obligatory.
A risk of loss of composure pointed out to the heart of the police headquarters. “The profiles of the members of the Brav-M question us: some are a bit crazy dogs, who evolve in a very virile environment. And intervening on a motorcycle with someone behind is dangerous”, judge Frédéric Guillo, secretary general of the CGT of the Paris police headquarters. The section could, in the coming days, take a stand in favor of disbanding the brigade.
“The risks are too great for the demonstrators, as for our colleagues, who are not sufficiently protected,” said the trade unionist. The stance will no doubt raise eyebrows among law enforcement. “The agents need more training in difficult conditions than a general questioning, advances our senior officer of the gendarmerie. The Brav-M is today one of the best tools in the operations of restoration of the order we face.” Sign of the extreme attention that the brigade has been arousing for a few days, four people presenting themselves as members of the Brav-M, testified, hooded, on the set of the program Do not touch My TV ! Friday March 31.
The main speaker, quickly identified, was dismissed in December from the national police. In the wake of the broadcast, the prefect of police of Paris Laurent Nuñez announced the opening of an administrative investigation and the referral to justice. “Investigations are underway, we must be extremely careful,” he said on BFM TV on April 2, assuring that, among these four people, “almost all are not Brav-M “. Asked about France Inter four days earlier, he had reaffirmed that the dissolution of the brigade “is not on the agenda”.