An amateur video showing a police officer hitting a woman with his baton and then spraying her and another woman with tear gas (see video below) has caused controversy in France. The interior minister Manuel Valls says an investigation has already begun into the incident that occurred in a deprived area of Joué-les-Tours near Tours in central western France at 7am on Sunday.
A local resident used his camera phone to capture the moment just after a man had been stopped by two officers for alleged drunk driving and started to resist arrest. The video, which was posted on YouTube with the title 'Shame on the French police', shows one of the policemen using his police baton to strike a woman who tried to intervene, then spraying her full in the face with a tear gas cannister. A second woman trying to help the arrested man is also seen being sprayed in the face with tear gas.
When five other officers arrive on the scene to help, the first police officer can be heard telling them: “He was driving in the middle of the road...he resisted, we fell on the ground, the bitch that we arrested, she bit me, the bitch.”
Questioned about the incident on television, interior minister Manuel Valls, who has been an ever-present figure in the media this summer, said that the police authority the Inspection générale de la police nationale (IGPN) had “already opened” an investigation so that the full facts of the case could come out. However he said: “I don't accept the words 'Shame on the French police'. Let's wait for all the evidence.”
The interior minister insisted there was “no place in the police force for violence and comments that have nothing to do with the idea of a republican police force”. However he also saluted the “difficult and remarkable” work of the “immense majority of the police”.
According to the police version of the episode, the footage broadcast on YouTube does not show key events leading up to the incident, and which justify the policeman using force in self-defence. The deputy prosecutor for Tours, Bruno Albisetti, who has heard the police version, says that initially two officers had tried to breathalyse the driver of a car that had been zigzagging along the street, with seven people inside. The driver had given an “incomplete” breath test and had refused to go to the police station for a further test. “As he was ...in a state of drunkenness the police officers tried to handcuff him on the ground,” says Albisetti.
At this point, says the deputy prosecutor, the driver tried to grab the gun of one of the officers while a woman passenger, seen in pink on the video, took off an officer's portable radio, preventing him from calling for reinforcements. She then bit him three times, on the shoulder and arms. “According to the doctor [editor’s note, he is referring to a specialist doctor used to assess the injuries of victims of crimes] if he had not been wearing his shirt the bite would have drawn blood,” says the deputy prosecutor.
However, Mediapart has obtained a second video, taken by the same 18-year-old man, Sélim, who took the other footage, which throws a different light on the incident. In particular, it suggests that it was the driver and not the woman later hit with the baton who bit the police officer. This footage, shown below, shows events that occurred several minutes before the other video.
It shows the start of the arrest of the driver, who was dressed in green trousers and who was already on the ground. The two officers try to handcuff him while a woman dressed in pink clings on to one of them saying: “He is on his own, there are two of you.” One of the officers strikes the woman with his baton or tonfa and then there is a free-for-all. “Ah, the bugger, he's bitten me,” the officer on the ground suddenly shouts. “You stop or I'll hit you with this,” threatens another woman in pink nearby, while a man in an orange shirt tries to calm things down.
Then the officer who was on the ground gets up, his shirt hanging out of his trousers, and hits the woman in pink several times with his baton, just missing her head.
Under French law a police officer can only use force in lawfully defending him or herself against an “unwarranted attack”, and the means of defence must be proportionate to the seriousness of that “attack”. The police code of conduct states: “When it is authorised by the law to use force and, in particular to use his weapons, the police officer can only use force that is strictly necessary and proportional to the goal to be achieved.” The code also makes clear that a police officer who is “at the service of the public” must have “absolute respect for people”. The current case raises important questions in relation to this code of conduct. Does a simple act of resistance justify an officer striking a woman on the ground with his baton, spraying her in the face with tear gas and then calling her a “bitch”? Did this woman represent a real danger to the two officers at 7am in a deserted residential area?
'If it had happened at 6pm it would have caused a riot'
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Police unions rallied to the defence of the officer at the centre of the controversy. “The [editor’s note, first] video might be shocking if you don't know the context,” Gaëlle James, from the second largest police union Synergie Officiers, told news agency AFP.
And Nicolas Comte, deputy secretary of police union Unité SGP Police FO, told Mediapart there were “no unjustified excesses” on the part of officers. “If you’re sitting in a living room you might think things should have been done differently, but it should not be forgotten that it was [the police] who were attacked. If I put myself in the shoes of my [bitten] colleague your first reaction is to seek to clear and remove the threat.”
In the meantime the deputy prosecutor in Tours has formally opened a preliminary criminal investigation into the incident, which will be carried out by officers from the Inspection générale de la police nationale (IGPN). The IGPN is also carrying out a parallel disciplinary investigation into the conduct of the officers involved. The prosecution authorities have asked them in particular to trace the man in the orange shirt who was present throughout the entire episode.
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As for Sélim, the 18-year-old who filmed both videos, he had no idea of the likely impact of him posting footage of the incident on the web. The first video, which was posted to YouTube on Sunday within hours of the incident, quickly attracted widespread attention and within 48 hours had been watched almost 700,000 times. Sélim describes how at 7am on Sunday he had been woken by his brother who had heard the incident begin, and he had quickly gone to get his smartphone to video what happened next. Later he went back to sleep, but when he awoke later the 18-year-old trainee tiler decided to put the film on YouTube.
“I am not a YouTuber, I normally just film things for my friends,” he told Mediapart. “That, that went too far, I wanted to show the people of this area who this person [editor's note, the police officer] was. As far as I was concerned the local area was going to see the video and that was all!” Having seen his video on the TV news all day, he later went to meet friends nearby to discuss the fallout from what he had done.
“You're mad to have given your name,” says one of his friends. “They will get revenge. What will you do in six months? Where will the journalists be in a year's time?” However Sandgy, 25, who works in local schools and leisure centres, is more than anything surprised at the impact of the video. “For once people are listening, we thought that as usual they wouldn’t and that it would be pointless,” he says. Sélim and his friends confirm that the police officer at the centre of the controversy is well-known in the area. “He took my brother's driving license,” says Sélim.
“He carried out a check on me and two friends on Friday evening,” adds Sandgy. “We were there with a pack of Heineken. He came by in a [Renault] Kangoo with another cop. He saw a little piece of cardboard that he ripped up thinking it was to roll a joint and told us 'It annoys me, all these lazy sods who smoke.' Then he said to me: 'You, why are you laughing, with your yellow teeth?' I murmured back to him: 'I prefer to have yellow teeth rather than wine stains.' He smashed up the beer packet and threatened to take us to the station.” Sandgy says: “It's unacceptable to have done that to the woman, she completely panicked.”
Sélim adds: “[The police officer] lost it a bit. They took advantage of the fact that it was 7am. If that had happened at 6pm it would have caused a riot.” He claims to have been stopped by the police 20 times, Sandgy, much less often. The former says: “You get stopped, your parents look out the window and when you get home you're given an earful like 'what have you been up to?'”
Other residents in the neighbourhood who saw the end of the incident also tell stories of encounters with the police that could have also caused controversy – had they, too, been widely witnessed. The difference about Sunday's encounter was that it was captured on video and seen by the world. “What people in the area are saying is that it's the police who put cameras everywhere but that this time it's they who have been caught,” says one neighbour who prefers not to give her name. “Everyone's laughing about it.”
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That mood is certainly not shared by the local police force, where officers have been forbidden to talk to the media. One, however, told Mediapart: “The video looks bad for us, these are nothing but tough times for the police. We have a job that gets more and more difficult.”
The arrested driver, who was the subject of an arrest warrant over a previous offence of driving without a license, has been held in custody, while the woman who allegedly bit the police officer has been bailed to appear in October on charges of abusing a public official and obstruction.
According to Mediapart's information, the group opposed to police stop and searches Stop le contrôle au faciès has already made a formal complaint to the ombudsman for citizens' rights the Défenseur des droits Dominique Baudis for alleged use of disproportionate force. However this is for the time being simply a symbolic act as only the victim of an alleged abuse can make a formal complaint, and so far the group has been unable to contact the woman who was hit with the baton. According to the prosecution authorities she has not yet made a formal complaint against the police.
The police who was videoed is meanwhile said to be on sick leave. According to one police union official he is “shocked” both by the incident itself and the level of media coverage it has received.
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English version by Michael Streeter