The word of a policeman, sufficient proof for crimes?

Riots 72 arrests throughout France overnight from Monday to Tuesday

Two visions of the police against each other. Symbol of the controversy, the report and therefore, the confidence placed in the word of the policeman. As umpire, Gérald Darmanin, the Minister of the Interior. In Le Figaro of July 28, Matthieu Valet, the spokesperson for the independent union of police commissioners (SICP), demanded a reform of the criminal law, to give weight to the word of the police officer. “We also need to restore strength and value to the word of the police officer. The report must really count as proof, among others, and be considered as probative force”, asked the commissioner. Clearly, the officer wants the procedure applicable to offenses to be modeled on the rules of fines. A penal bomb, potentially, which would change the exercise of justice completely or almost.

Article 537 of the Code of Criminal Procedure provides that “contraventions are proven either by minutes or reports, or by witnesses in the absence of reports and minutes, or in support thereof.” It is stated that “the minutes or reports drawn up by the officers and agents of the judicial police […] are authentic until proven otherwise”. If a police officer sees you hitting a stop sign in the car or making a phone call while driving, his testimony is enough to have you condemned in court, unless you bring proof that this testimony is erroneous. Same thing concerning “insults to an officer”, these insults pronounced by a person detained by the police.This is not the case for misdemeanors, these more serious offenses which are punishable by a prison sentence.

Feeling of empty work

Article 430 of the Code of Criminal Procedure provides that “except in the case where the law provides otherwise, the minutes and reports noting the offenses are only valid as simple information”. Police testimony, for example, is not enough to prove that a protester threw a Molotov cocktail at law enforcement. It is also necessary to have fingerprints, exhibits confiscated during the arrest or a video. It is this type of scenario that annoys the police: during the social movements or the riots of June-July 2023, the discrepancy between the number of arrests and the number of convictions is significant.

From March 15 to 18, 2023, for example, the demonstrations against the Labor law gave rise to 442 police custody in Paris, according to the prosecution, but only… 52 referrals to justice. Nearly nine times out of ten, the person in custody came out free, exempt from any charge. It is this impression of working on empty that the police want to correct. “The idea is that we are in a system where the word of the police officer is worth less than that of the offenders, while we would at least expect it to be considered in the same way. For the police officer in the field , to see that we are less bored to draw up a ticket rather than a report for an offense, it is to have the feeling that there is a double standard”, explains Matthieu Valet to L’Express.

End of “word against word”

The claim is shared by the main police unions, Unit SGP Police-FO and Alliance. “Today, there are situations where lawyers question the elements written in the minutes, clues, testimonies, confessions of the defendants too. These challenges end in favor of the offenders, because in the event of “word against word”, the judges rule in favor of the offender”, explains Linda Kebbab, the national delegate of the SGP Police-FO Unit. Eric Henry, special adviser to the Alliance office, also “joins” this proposal. “This would make it more accountable and it would commit the minutes writers even more,” said the trade unionist.

To counterbalance this reform, the police propose to crack down more severely on false testimony. “The corollary of this proposal is that a police officer who lies on his report would risk the Assize Court”, explains Matthieu Vallet to the Figaro. In fact, it already is. According to article 441-4 of the Criminal Code, the crime of forgery in public writing is punishable by fifteen years in prison and a fine of 225,000 euros. It is still necessary to have the proof… of the false testimony.

In several cases, police speech is rightly questioned. On June 30, L’Express devoted an article to “Mexicans”, these police agreements on a common version contrary to the facts. On November 21, 2020, four police officers claimed to be victims of “violence” by Michel Zecler, a music producer, in Paris. He was placed in custody. However, the surveillance cameras showed that the producer had, on the contrary, been beaten up by the police. In the Zineb Redouane case, named after this octogenarian Algerian who died after being hit by an LBD shot on her balcony on December 1, 2018, in Marseille, the CRS team concerned refused to tell the justice who had fired.

Same silence before the “police of police” for two Bac de Marseille agents accused of serious violence against Hedi, a 22-year-old young man hit by an LBD shot on the night of July 1 to 2, 2023 , as he left work. They claimed to remember nothing, according to BFMTV. The police officer carrying the LBD was remanded in custody. It was this imprisonment that triggered the police revolt. Two other of these agents conversely acknowledged the violence.

Pégase file questioned

In the Nahel affair, too, the word of the police is in doubt. Not on a report, but on a so-called Pegasus sheet written by a command operator. On the strength of the statements of a police officer, the operator writes, after the fatal intervention, that “the driver tried to leave by rushing into the official”. A precision of extreme importance since without the video invalidating this assertion, the police officer who fired the shot could have been exempted from all responsibility. The first qualification of the facts by the prosecution also targeted Nahel and not the author of the shot. Nahel’s family lawyer asked for these facts to be clarified.

According to Alliance and the Union of Commissioners of the National Police, Gérald Darmanin said he was “open”, at the end of a working meeting on July 27, to the police being exempted from pre-trial detention in the event of prosecution. . He did not comment, on the other hand, on the battle of the minutes which comes.

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