The head of France’s national police force, Frédéric Veaux, last week announced that six white officers are to face a disciplinary hearing for exchanging racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic and sexist comments on a private WhatsApp discussion group composed of 11 policemen.
The following day, the Paris public prosecution services announced they had opened a preliminary investigation into revelations that a private Facebook group whose members number more than 8,000 police and gendarmerie officers frequently exchanged racist and sexist comments.
The two cases have further fuelled a mounting and angry public debate over allegations and denials of systemic racist behaviour in the police force in France, where mass protests against racism and police violence have mirrored those taking place around the world and which erupted after the killing on May 25th in the US of George Floyd, an Afro-American who was suffocated to death during his arrest by a Minneapolis policeman who knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes.
The Floyd case bears striking similarities to the death in France of Adama Traoré, a 24-year-old of Malian family origin who died when he was pinned to the ground during his arrest by gendarmes in a town just north of Paris in 2016. Traoré’s family have led a constant campaign against what they say has been a coverup, and last Tuesday, amid the growing mobilisations in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, around 20,000 people took part in a banned protest outside the Paris lawcourts building in support of the family, and against police violence and racism.
That prompted the announcement that the judicial investigation into Traoré's death would now question several key witnesses to the events, raising further questions about the handling of the case, beginning with why they had not been questioned during four years.
Despite the large numbers of people turning out in the demonstrations, officially banned for reasons of social distancing measures imposed over the Covid-19 virus epidemic, government and police officials, and also officers’ union representatives, have claimed that incidents of racism in the police is down to an unrepresentative minority. “It is not the case to say that we have a racist police or state, I wouldn’t say that,” commented Stanislas Guerini, leader of President Emmanuel Macron’s ruling LREM party in parliament, on Sunday.
The same day, Christian Jacob, head of the conservative Les Républicains party, the principal opposition bloc in France, declared that “police violence does not exist in France” and that, “There is racism in France against which one must fight, but we don’t have a racist police in France, that doesn’t exist”.
"The French police isn't racist," said also national police chief Frédéric Veaux, commenting on the case of the WhatsApp discussion group. "It suffers from behaviour which in no way corresponds to the republican values it defends."
But the vile exchanges of six police officers in the WhatsApp group, obtained by Mediapart and ARTE Radio, the online podcast site of French-German broadcaster ARTE, along with the revelations by French online news outlet StreetPress about the comments exchanged by a private Facebook group of more than 8,000 police and gendarmerie personnel, suggest a far more disturbing extent of racism within France’s forces of law and order.
Mediapart and ARTE Radio have accessed copies of the messages exchanged on the WhatsApp group composed of 11 policemen, which first came to light when they were discovered last December by a black police officer serving alongside them in the northern French town of Rouen, in Normandy.
Several of those taking part in the discussion group spoke of an impending “racial war” for which they said they were preparing with stocks of weapons. They denounced “enemies of the white race”, described black people as “niggers”, and Arabs (of North African origin) by the equally offensive term in French, “bougnoules”, women as “whores”, Jews as “sons of bitches” and who “govern the country” along with “leftists”, while male homosexuals were dismissed as “poofs”.
Mediapart reveals here the details of their audio exchanges, and the history of the case which, in the current climate of mobilisations against police violence and racism, raise questions about both the extent of the problem and the will to stamp it out.
Alex, the black officer who reported the conversations to his superiors (and whose last name is withheld here on his request), worked as a deputy-sergeant for the Rouen police’s administrative and judicial assistance unit (l’Unité d’assistance administrative et judiciaire, or UAAJ), a service which ensures the security of the local prefecture and law courts during trials, including the escort of defendants. He discovered their existence when he found himself in an office one day with a young policeman – an “adjoint de sécurité” (which is a junior rank of officer, created to encourage under-30s to join the police with less qualifications than normally required) – and saw his name appear in a message on the colleague’s mobilephone screen. The latter agreed to show him a series of exchanges which he then recorded, and which covered the period last year from November 4th to December 26th.
With the help of lawyer Yaël Godefroy, Alex sent a report to his superiors and filed a complaint on December 23rd (three days before the final recordings were completed) against six of the officers – who include seasoned officers and two junior-rank ‘adjoints de sécurité’ – who took part in the exchanges. The complaint cited “non-public” insults and defamation regarding a person’s “origins, ethnicity, nationality, race, or religion”. Subsequently, Éric Maudier, head of the local public security administration, the DDSP, a broad administration for policing, also alerted the local public prosecution services.
In mid-January, Rouen public prosecutor Pascal Prache opened an investigation which he handed to the police internal inspection services, the IGPN. Under French law, if found guilty, the people involved in the exchanges, because they were private, can only face a maximum fine of 1,500 euros.
Meanwhile, the DDSP’s ethics department launched a parallel inquiry which concluded with the decision to send the six officers before an internal disciplinary tribunal hearing, the date for which has not been announced, and which has the power to sack the men.
For the time being, the six officers remain in the force and in contact with the public, although a police source told Mediapart that they had been “given new duties within their service”. Their smartphones have not been removed as evidence, and Mediapart has learnt that some had boasted, before the decision to send them before a disciplinary tribunal, of deleting a large number of the incriminating messages.
Concerned at the investigations into the exchanges was making little progress, Alex’s lawyer Yaël Godefroy wrote to the Rouen public prosecutor on Tuesday last week to express his astonishment that neither Alex nor the junior officer who had first shown him the conversations had been formally questioned. “My client is fearful of the loss or alteration of pieces of evidence,” wrote Godefroy, who insisted that the full texts of the conversations should be recorded before they might be made inaccessible.
Contacted by Mediapart, the Rouen prosecutor said the IGPN investigation was “ongoing” and that some of those involved had been questioned last Wednesday.
Alex agreed to be to be interviewed in this joint investigation by Mediapart and ARTE Radio, first in February and again last month, and for his account to be published. The full audio of his interview, with ARTE Radio’s Ilham Maad and sound extracts from the WhatsApp exchanges can be heard by clicking on the file below, in French (this report continues overpage).
Preparing a private arsenal for 'the civil war'
Some of the conversations by the six officers – whose first names are Gilles, Camille, Julien, Thibaut, Xavier and Guewen – directly targeted Alex. One of the six was critical of his “nigger’s work”, which was followed by a flow of crude comments. One said Alex “must charm to death the niggers’ white whore”, and that “any old chick who has a minimum of sense knows that she is dealing with a typically seductive nigger who would make her a cuckold at every level”.
One of their female colleagues who they believed was romantically involved with Alex was described as a “whore for niggers”, while another comment was that, “In any case, the chicks don’t want a good guy, they latch onto the nigger who shags them and who dumps them afterwards”.
Another told his colleagues that if he was in charge of the police training programme there would be no more “Blacks, Arabs, and fewer chicks”.
They denounced “girls who like bastards” rather than “white males”, and that: “Given that it’s the Jews and leftists who govern the country, things are done so that the girls go for the bougnoule or the nigger. In England or in Germany it’s not like that, you educate your daughter so that she continues inside the Aryan race.”
“What the whores haven’t understood is that however much they [their partners] be little punks, rioters, shitbag bougnoules, sooner or later they’ll end up paying for it,” said one. “For example, when there’ll be an economic collapse, they won’t know how to protect them […] I’ve got weapons, on the other hand, and so with weapons I’ll be able to defend [a woman] better than a big bastard who she chose, better than her monkey.”
Another bemoaned that the women were “too coloured” in his particular police unit. “There’s only that in my section, there’s nothing but coloured,” he added. “There are two white [women] in ten […] If I tell them that I’m fascist, there’s not a single one who would want to talk to me.”
Such comments appear to demonstrate that the officers were conscious that their conversations were to remain confidential. One stated that their private WhatsApp chat group was open “only to men, and not all the men of the unit necessarily have access to it”. In the audio recordings, their relaxed manner included sounds of burps and farts, as they spoke of “air chambers” – an apparent reference to gas chambers – or the need to “purge” France.
There were diatribes against “Jewish singers”, in which they cited Jean-Jacques Goldman and the late Daniel Balavoine, who they accused of “pro-nigger and bougnoules propaganda”. There were questions raised over whether French journalist and political commentator Jean-Michel Aphatie was a Jew – who they suggested had “a quite suspect phenotype” – and who was a “big son of a bitch who will have to be taken down”. Those they called a “leftwing son of a bitch” were in a category described as: “You’re a leftwing shit, you deserve to die. Putin would take care of your mush, quick and good. On with the civil war, on with the collapse, there’s not only the [racial] diversity that will pay dearly, there’s the Left also. It will really be necessary to eliminate these sons of bitches. One day or another, these dickheads will really have to pay.”
One of those taking part announced he had just bought an “assault rifle”. Another said he had “ten weapons at home”. One spoke of buying “flashbang grenades”, and was told, “I’ll take four from you, that way I’ve got two in my bag and two at home”. One of the junior officers who was unhappy that he had not been issued with a service pistol he could carry out-of-hours said he had bought “one or two little daft things in compensation”. These were, he said, “a mini-pepper [spray], my telescopic [truncheon], my [electric phone] contact shocker, my knuckleduster”.
They came up with slogans, like “Make Normandy Viking again”. The slew of insults continued: “Where we, the racialist nationalists, must be clever is in leaving an inter-sectional combat, requiring them, between each other, to exterminate themselves. They’ll separate themselves between pro-Arabs and pro-Jews, biting their faces off. For example, [radical-left leader Jean-Luc] Mélenchon is very pro-Arab. There are the feminists, you don’t know on what cheek you dance on, those fat whores. When the feminists, the LBGT, the Jews, the bougnoules, the blacks who aren’t Muslim, begin to bite their heads off between them, you eat your popcorn, you watch the telly, you sharpen your weapons and, when they’re properly weakened, you finish off the animals.”
Among the six police officers now due to be presented before a disciplinary hearing, one in particular, Gilles C. (last name withheld), aged 46, appeared particularly active. Alex believes he is “the guru of the group”. On the WhatsApp group he shared tens of links to a racist and anti-Semitic website that is reportedly linked to Boris Le Lay, a French neo-Nazi who found refuge in Japan after convictions in France for inciting racial hatred (see more, in French, here). Using a Nordic-sounding pseudonym, Gilles C., a self-proclaimed “fan of history” and heavy metal music, also posts comments on the internet. One, in September 2019, was about the film Jojo Rabbit, a satirical comedy about Adolf Hitler and Nazi ideals, which he dismissed as “Another Jewish propaganda film”.
After having recently closed his Facebook page, he continues to post messages under the same pseudonym, notably on a Russian online social media and networking platform, VKontakt, popular with the far-right. On March 27th this year, while the IGPN internal police investigation into Alex’s complaint was underway, he congratulated Boris Le Lay on his VKontakt profile. “Super video,” he wrote. “Long life and prosperity from Normandy.”
Gilles C. did not respond to Mediapart’s attempts by email to contact him.
'He wants a debate about racism in our institutions'
Another member of the group, Thibault D., spoke of his videos about survivalism and weapons posted online via YouTube, expressing his surprise that the platform deleted them for “inciting violence”. When his colleagues advised him to try posting on other platforms, he replied that “the monetization” was less interesting than on YouTube. “In any case, I can’t say what I want, I have to remain at a minimum of correctness, quite simply because I’m a cop,” he commented. “And that the day the hierarchy comes across it, if it hasn’t already come across it, I want there to be nothing illegal or amoral that I can be criticised for, that I can’t be disciplined for.”
Among the audio exchanges, some were about individuals who the officers were in charge of looking after at the Rouen law courts. The defendants appearing in one trial were described variously as “shitty big nigger” and “big bougnoule”. Regularly, those taking part complained that their comments could be considered to be racist.
Towards the end of December some of them were notified that they were to be questioned. While underlining that their exchanges were “private”, they spoke of having begun deleting some. They were finally interviewed in the framework of the disciplinary inquiry on January 6th.
Alex said he had been “shocked” by what he discovered. “It drives [one] to craziness, I couldn’t sleep for it,” he said. “I live alone. I spoke about it to my brother, to friends, but it was hard. I had to take it upon myself and decide to advance.”
His lawyer Yaël Godefroy said he was “astounded by the violence” of the exchanges. “These comments go beyond what is tolerable,” he added. “My client couldn’t even read all of them, he asked me to take note of them.”
“For a week I was in the same [police] premises as the individuals I had denounced, but they didn’t know [I had],” said Alex. “The Christmas celebrations were dreadful.” When he returned to work from the end of year holidays, he learnt he was to change service, posted to the anti-delinquency patrols. “The posting was imposed upon me, but I won’t complain. It’s a field that I like. My superiors are attentive and close to their men. No-one talks to me about this business, and I also avoid talking about it, but I received demonstrations of support.”
Alex said that throughout his career in the force, beginning in 1999, he had been disturbed by certain comments he came across. For while he recalled “magnificent years” serving in a Paris suburb, up until 2008, he also remembers a few colleagues making “racist jokes” and little comments. “On patrol, for example, if they saw a car with coloured people in it, they’d say, ‘That’s a car of bastards, but you, you’re not like them, you chose to be like us’.”
He recalled the change he met on arrival in Rouen: “There are fewer West Indian and North African colleagues, fewer black officers. We’re immediately judged on our appearance. Surrounded by whites, they find it easier to loosen up.” He said he learnt how some – including a court bailiff who was a former police officer – nicknamed him “The Black” or “The nigger” in his back.
“I don’t want to make myself out to be a victim, to say that there’s nothing I can reproach myself for or that I am the best officer in the world. I no doubt reacted too aggressively, I didn’t show the example over the manner of defending myself. But I passed on the information, and nothing at all has happened,” added Alex, speaking to Mediapart before the announcement last Thursday that the six officers from the WhatsApp group were to be brought before a disciplinary tribunal.
“My client has been courageous, his colleague who lent him his phone also,” said lawyer Yaël Godefroy. “He wants this to reach beyond his personal case, that there be a debate about racism in our institutions, and avoiding two pitfalls: the stigmatisation of the police on the one hand, [and] the talk about the [few] ‘rotten apples’ on the other.”
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- The original French text of this report can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse