The sequence hardly lasts fifty seconds, but it will have been enough to sweep away a whole argument. On Tuesday June 27, around 8:15 a.m., in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine), a passer-by takes video on her smartphone of an altercation between two police bikers and a motorist. We see the members of the police leaning on the driver’s side on the door of a yellow Mercedes. At the wheel, Nahel M., 17 years old. One of the policemen holds him at gunpoint. “You’re going to get shot in the head!” one of them shouts. The car starts and a shot goes off. The young man, struck in the heart, lost control of his vehicle. 50 meters further on, the car hit a traffic sign in Nelson-Mandela Square. The Samu intervenes, but Nahel M. dies a few tens of minutes later.
The Nanterre public prosecutor’s office successively opened two investigations. One, first, targeting Nahel M. for “refusal to comply and attempted homicide on a person holding public authority”. The death of the teenager put an end to it. The other concerns the police officer who fired the shot. Thursday, June 29, he was indicted for intentional homicide and remanded in custody.
This decision contrasts sharply with the first elements of language supported by police sources in the media – and probably on the record, as the first investigation opened by the prosecution tends to show. According to these first testimonies, the young man’s vehicle would have run into the police bikers, forcing them to respond, in self-defense. A version swept by the images of the video broadcast on social networks. If the light must still be shed on the precise circumstances of this shooting, this case reminds us that it happens that the concordant testimonies of the police are out of step with the reality of the facts. There is a name for this well-known practice in the police world: “Mexicans” – sometimes referred to as “merguez” – which are false declarations by police officers. The idea is to agree on a version in order to make legal an act that was not.
“The practice has been known for a long time”
The “Mexican” is a classic of detective films, of North ferry to Miserables. Its existence in “real life” is an open secret. “The practice has been known for a long time”, explains Frédéric Debove, lecturer in private law and member of the certification jury issuing the title of head of police units.
One of the most emblematic cases dates back to the 1980s, with the so-called “Irish of Vincennes” affair. In August 1982, a series of attacks fell on France, the deadliest of which took place on rue des Rosiers, in Paris. Six people of the Jewish faith are killed. In the process, the Elysée created its own anti-terrorist unit, led by the boss of the GIGN, Christian Prouteau. Following the investigation, three Irish activists are imprisoned. “To bring down suspected members of the IRA, the gendarmes will search their homes, bringing weapons from previous seizures and saying that these people are going to commit an attack, continues Frédéric Debove. This case- there, it is the very symbol of what the ‘Mexican’ is: a dirty trick, outside the legal framework.”
No need, however, to reach the size of a state affair to use it. “It’s simple: when something goes outside the scope of the criminal procedure, even in a minimal way, it can be designated as such”, analyzes Agnès Naudin, police captain, spokesperson for the Snuitam-FSU union and co-author of Police. The law of omerta (Le Cherche Midi). Small “arrangements” with the procedure that the policewoman explains to have known firsthand. “When a search has not been written manually, in pen, you can be sure that, technically, it is a Mexican: it was written later, at the police station, from the notes taken, and not on place, as the procedure would require, she explains. Sometimes, we are forced to distort the procedure knowing that we have no right to do so.
Known miscellaneous facts
Better known and much more reprehensible, “Mexican-style” searches refer to illegal searches. The news items involving “narcotics” agents regularly mention these practices outside of any legal framework. In February 2022, six police officers from the anti-crime brigade (BAC) of Stains (Seine-Saint-Denis) were tried in particular for having carried out searches outside any legal framework, and “targeted people” engaged in drug trafficking. to steal them and resell the goods. Four of them were given suspended prison sentences of six to thirty months. Five months later, a fifth police officer accused of forgery in public writing was given a twelve-month suspended prison sentence.
The previous year, in April 2021, the trial of 18 ex-police officers also opened in Marseille. The defendants were accused of having made, while they were members of the BAC North of the city, levies on the earnings of dealers, their goods, thefts of contraband cigarettes seized from street vendors… and also an illegal search of an apartment.
“The Mexican is well known to the judicial police, in particular the narcotics brigade”, continues Frédéric Debove. The methods of the ex-boss of the fight against drugs François Thierry had in particular brought it to light. “He is accused of having leaked 7 tons of narcotics for the benefit of his informant, a drug baron, in return for traffickers whose names he would have given, he continues. François Thierry is about to to be sent back to the assizes for forgery and destruction of evidence. In particular, he would have set up a false procedure demanding police custody, simply to allow his informant, who was in prison, to use a telephone to manage his drug trafficking . Here, we are purely Mexican.”
“We must all agree”
These barbouzeries are not the only opportunities to employ Mexican women. Frédéric Debove, who was a member of the National Commission for Security Ethics (CNDS) – which disappeared in 2011 and whose missions are now devolved to the defender of rights – remembers having dealt with procedures in which forgeries had been written . “Ethically, the police have an obligation to faithfully report what they have seen. But sometimes the temptation can be great for them, to secure a procedure, to write or say inaccurate things”, says Frederic Debove. He gives the example of a textbook case: “A policeman will say that a blow was struck him, and that he reacted in a situation of self-defense, by striking a necessary blow. By viewing a video recording , we realize that the first blow was struck by the policeman, he continues. These things happen, and some are being demonstrated – or have been – by justice.
In February 2020, a BAC agent from Essonne was, for example, indicted for “willful violence resulting in mutilation” against Adnane Nassih, a young man who lost an eye after a shooting. of LBD. Documents released by Release showed the efforts of his superiors to support the agent despite everything. Proof of an assumed strategy, they even go so far as to use the term “Mexican”, with which they seem familiar: “Of course it’s better to tell the truth, at least to the crew, if he tweaked. Afterwards, we arrange a truth, but we don’t lie to each other, writes one of the agents in a private conversation. Like when we do a Mexican, we all have to agree. “
No room for error
The use of this illegal practice is, according to Agnès Naudin, the symptom of a deep problem in the conception of police work. “We teach agents that there is no room for error, she explains. And that, when there is one, you must at all costs find someone responsible. The temptation is therefore great not to admit wrongdoing.” The Mexican is also a form of social control among the police: impossible to speak or to denounce the actions of his colleagues, under penalty of being ostracized from the rest of the brigade. “It’s what you could call the strategy of opening the umbrella. Everyone covers themselves,” continues the policewoman, who details the consequences of this culture of omerta in the book she co-edited. .
The extent of these excesses, taboo by essence, is not measured in any official document. Until now, their existence was detected only in the presence of material evidence of lying, in particular videos of citizens. “The videos may be a game-changer, believes Agnès Naudin. From now on, we will be less and less in word against word.”
At this stage, it is impossible to say whether the Nanterre affair is the result of a concerted “Mexican” or simply a poor assessment of the situation by the police. But the practice of “covering the colleague” rather than spontaneously delivering the truth does exist. Witness the Zineb Redouane affair. On December 1, 2019, during “act 3” of the yellow vests, in Marseille, this octogenarian was hit by a tear gas grenade launched by a group of CRS as she closed the shutters of her home. She dies the next day. For months, the five CRS questioned claim not to know who fired. In May 2020, a ballistic report concluded that the CRS was exonerated… still not identified. However, in November 2020, the media Disclose published a second video report showing that the shooting was not legal. The IGPN then ends up identifying the CRS and asking for it to appear before a disciplinary board. A recommendation that the Directorate General of the National Police (DGPN) decides not to follow. No police officer has yet been sued in the case.