The national police reorganization project, tested in eight departments since 2021, should see the light of day at the beginning of next year. Carried by the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, and announced in the “White Paper on Internal Security” published in November 2020, it nevertheless meets many detractors, in particular among judicial police officers and investigating judges.
The flagship measure: create departmental directorates of the national police (DDPN). Either the regrouping under a single command of public security, territorial intelligence (the former RG), border police and judicial police. It is thus a question of putting an end to the functioning of the police departments similar to “organ pipes”, where until now, each head of the regional sector was accountable to a national central, based in Paris.
The deadline for the Paris-2024 Olympic Games and the recent incidents at the Stade de France seem to be accelerating the desire for reform of the national police, while certain experiments only began in January 2022. “In certain departments, the things have barely had time to put themselves in place, that we are already told that the project must be nationalized”, regrets an officer on condition of anonymity. “2024 is a deadline that comes up repeatedly in the discussions and I see only that which could motivate such an acceleration”, underlines Yann Bastière, national investigation delegate of the SGP Police unit union. And to add: “We are not against a reform of the national police, as long as we do not damage the services that work. But we realize that the judicial police risk disappearing”.
Merger of staff and loss of skills
In this new organization of the national police, one and the same service should unite the officers of the judicial police – usually responsible for the fight against high crime – and their colleagues in public security, who deal with the delinquency of the day-to-day (bag-snatching, possession of narcotics, etc.). “In other words, it is a question of managing a shortage of staff, by deploying hyper-specialized police officers from the PJ on everyday crimes”, annoys Yann Bastière. “Overall, we fear a dilution of the services of PJ in the general services, opines Thierry Griffet, project manager at the union of magistrates (USM) and vice-prosecutor in Clermont-Ferrand. It’s a bit as if we were asking specialist doctors, such as surgeons, to be first and foremost generalists”.
The problem is raised by many magistrates. And for good reason: they work daily in close collaboration with those who are called “les péjistes”. “They have 100 years of existence, a very particular know-how and a significant capacity for intervention which allows long-term investigations, underlines Frédéric Macé, investigating judge in Caen and secretary general of the AFMI (Association of the investigating magistrates). With this reform, we will certainly make it possible to reduce the processing times for small cases handled by the public security police officers. But to the detriment of serious crime”.
The meeting of all the police officers of a department under the direction of a single chief greatly worries OPJ and magistrates. “The problem is that if national priority is given to intra-family violence and narcotics, as at present, then we will not do anything else, laments Thierry Griffet. We risk falling even further into a logic of numerical politics ” .
“The judicial police have legitimately expressed their fear of seeing themselves weakened. The worldevoking in particular a future national direction of the judicial police which will keep its central offices and will pilot the whole of the sector, “without suppression of local services”, and a perimeter of action of the PJ widened beyond the only limits of ‘a department.
In a recent interview with Parisian, the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin also tried to reassure his world: “We need a departmental head to better pool police resources, better communicate and improve relations with elected officials; all this for more efficiency for our compatriots. Should this put an end to the judicial police, to the existence of branches, of central offices, which are intra-departmental, even intra-regional, the answer is no. We will therefore keep branches, interdepartmental PJ and central offices. This is the specificity of the PJ, it must, on the contrary, make it sacred”, he thus assured, while remaining cautious. “The departmental director must be able to coordinate all the resources, otherwise this reform makes no sense. But the future national director of the judicial police will be responsible for the entire investigation process, from taking a complaint to the police station until dealing with organized crime. Better coordination, both at territorial and national level, for a better response to victims and to the legitimate expectations of magistrates”.
Risk of undermining the separation of powers
On the side of the magistrates, who work directly in connection with the PJ, many wonder on the other hand about the absence of speech of the Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti, so much the file of this reorganization seems to be transversal. Because today, the judicial police is placed under the direct control of the judicial authority. “It is a constitutional principle which stems from Article 66 of the Constitution”, recalls Thierry Griffet of the USM. “The judicial police is certainly under the administrative hierarchy of the Ministry of the Interior and the local directorates, but within the framework of their professional exercise, the OPJs are under the control and the direction of the investigating magistrates and the prosecution”, adds the Norman magistrate Frederic Mace.
But with this new organization, where the OPJ would be placed under the control of a single head of the department, himself dependent on the prefect and therefore on the Ministry of the Interior, the executive and judicial powers could collide. In other words, politics could interfere with justice. “We are sometimes in charge of sensitive files which may involve elected officials or large companies established in a region. The investigations must be carried out discreetly with a direct report between the investigating magistrates and the OPJ. But if tomorrow the PJ is placed under a departmental management, this principle is collapsing”, warns Thierry Griffet.
Vocation crisis
Despite the discretion usually incumbent on them, the judicial police officers do not hide their fears and their dissatisfaction. In Marseille, Lyon or Nîmes, the sling is organized. On June 27, 36 judicial police officers from the Toulon branch sent a report to their hierarchy, which L’Express was able to consult, expressing their fears regarding this reorganization. “In accordance with awareness raising for the prevention of psychosocial risks, [nous souhaitons] draw attention to the method used by this reform so that a change of practice can take place now in order to preserve your workforce and guarantee the continuity of this public service”, they write. A “method” which would, according to them, generate a “feeling of uselessness”, “stress” and a lot of “disarray”.
A state of mind observed by Frédéric Macé in Calvados, which is one of the eight pilot departments of this reform. “There is a deep demotivation of the péjistes in Caen, he assures. Notes like that of Toulon, we receive them every day”. The malaise has even lasted for several years, according to the trade unionist SGP Police Fo, Yann Bastière. “The summons crisis in the judiciary is not new. For a few years now, we have seen a total disaffection for these services, in connection with a loss of sense of mission”.