One press release can overshadow another. The text published this Friday, June 30 by Alliance and Unsa Police, the two main national police unions, made an impression. The two organizations, which came out on top with nearly 50% of the vote thanks to an alliance in the professional elections of December 2022, castigated the “harmful” ones, including young rioters, and concluded in martial terms: “Today, the police are in combat because we are at war. Tomorrow we will be in resistance.” Two days earlier, Alliance published an equally controversial message, in response to the declaration of Emmanuel Macron, who considered “inexplicable” and “inexcusable” the homicide of young Nahel. “Through [ces] remarks, contrary to his declarations that he supports the police, it is inconceivable that the President of the Republic, like certain political leaders, artists or others, flout the separation of powers”, thundered the union.
A virulent tone in defense of the police corporation: this style has become the hallmark of Alliance, which does not always bother with this separation of powers, as when its boss, Fabien Vanhemelryck, affirms before the National Assembly, in May 2021, that “the problem of justice is the police”. “Alliance is generally in a very corporatist defense of the profession, with finally a relatively weak capacity to question the profession”, analyzes Mathieu Zagrodzki, researcher specialized in internal security. When it comes to sanctions against police officers, the organization is even threatening. In June 2020, already, she protested in a leaflet. “Yellow vests demonstration – the police are not presumed innocent but already found guilty!”, Claimed Alliance, before threatening the Ministry of the Interior in veiled words: “National Police Alliance is not afraid to warn our authorities […] we will be attentive to any arbitrary decision and we are prepared to react if necessary.”
Olivier Cahn, professor of criminal law at the University of Tours and specialist in policing policy, believes that a turning point occurred from the revolt of the yellow vests in December 2018: “Alliance is managed to persuade the executive that he was only holding on thanks to the police.” Hence the embarrassment of Beauvau officials, eager not to alienate this union, ultra-influential within a profession that is 90% embedded. No minister wished to engage in reflection on a reform of the police institution, whether on the subject of the wearing of cameras by the police or that of the independence of the IGPN. In several cases, such as the death of Zineb Redouane, an octogenarian hit by a CRS shot while she was closing her shutters, on December 1, 2018 in Marseille, no police officer was sanctioned, against the advice of the IGPN . In the case of the death of Rayana, a passenger fatally injured in Paris by police fire after refusing to comply, in June 2022, none of the officials had even been heard yet, in April 2023.