Racial or homophobic insults, gratuitous violence, a colleague's suicide: a journalist on Thursday detailed his undercover experience in France's police force where he said abuse was commonplace, if only among a handful of officers, reports CTV.
In his new book "Flic" [Cop] Valentin Gendrot recounts two years as a junior officer in the capital's northeast, which has several rough neighbourhoods where crime and drug use is rife.
Its publication comes as French police are facing growing calls for reform after years of claims of systematic abuse, in particular against the country's black and Arab minorities.
"The violence is recurrent - it's not a daily thing, I wouldn't go that far, but in any case it is recurrent," Gendrot told AFP in an interview.
The 32-year-old, who has made a career of infiltrating tough jobs such as a factory line or supermarket worker, says he was given only a cursory three months of training after applying to the national police force - using his real name - in 2017.
"At no point did they do an internet search of my name, at no point did they dig a little deeper into my background," he said.
He eventually joined a police station in the 19th district of Paris in March 2019, just as the force was being roiled by claims of heavy-handed tactics against the "yellow vest" protesters staging weekly rallies against the government.
Gendrot spent much of his time on neighbourhood patrols, where he says he was "absolutely stunned" from the start.
On his first day, he said, "an officer struck a man in custody for questioning" because he was making too much noise, and a woman was sent home when she tried to file a complaint against "death threats" by her husband.