Over the past five years in France, one person has died and at least 35 others have been wounded, many seriously, by the hard rubber projectiles fired from supposedly non-lethal guns used by police on crowd-control missions.
The controversial police weapons, called LBDs, for lanceur de balles de défense (defence bullet launchers), send their rubber bullets from a 40mm barrel at a speed of 250 kph (more than 73 metres per second), and have left demonstrators and bystanders with shocking life-changing wounds, including the irreversible blinding of eyes and skull fractures.
But Mediapart can reveal that an instruction to police stipulating that LBDs can only be used against human targets from a minimum distance of ten metres has disappeared, replaced by an “operational” distance advised by the manufacturer of the munitions. In effect, this provides for their use as of a distance of just three metres.
Among recent victims of the weapons is Hedi (last name withheld), a 22-year-old man who was shot by an LBD, and then beaten, by police during rioting in the southern port city of Marseille during the night of July 1st-2nd. The unrest in Marseille was part of several days of rioting around French towns and cities following the shooting dead by a policeman of Nahel Merzouk, 17, during a traffic stop in a Paris suburb.
Hedi, a restaurant worker, insists he was not “in any way” involved in the disturbances, but had been walking with a friend while observing the trouble on the street. CCTV video evidence clearly supports his version of events, as revealed by Mediapart earlier this month (see the images here in which he can be seen walking away with his back turned when he was hit). Five police officers are under investigation in a judicial probe opened into the case.
Hedi was shot in the head by the LBD bullet – he also suffered a fractured jaw in the subsequent police beating – which caused a brain haemorrhage that necessitated the removal of a large part of his skull. He has since undergone a series of operations, the latest of them this month while another is due in November. He is threatened with developing permanent partial paralysis and loss of sight in his left eye.
Across the European Union, the only member countries whose police forces are equipped with weapons firing rubber projectiles are France, Greece and Poland. LBDs were first introduced into the armoury of France’s two principal policing forces, the National Police and the gendarmerie, in the 2000s, when they replaced the Flash-Ball launcher, a similar weapon. The use of LBD guns, and the rules surrounding their employment, became highly controversial with the horrific wounds that the weapon caused in heavy-handed policing of the so-called “yellow vest” anti-government protests in 2018. The gun is officially classified in France as being a “category A2” weapon, which is the same as rocket launchers.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Official instructions issued to police in August 2017 were that officers using LBDs were not to aim at the head but to target “the torso as also the lower limbs”. When the person targeted has been hit, the officer using the LBD was to check on their condition and to keep watch over them. In a circular issued to all law enforcement officers in February 2019, citing the criminal law code and regulations covering domestic security activities, the interior ministry detailed that firing LBDs must be limited to “the strict respect of the principles of necessity and proportionality”.
Apart from cases of self-defence – which are when an officer, one of his colleagues or a third party is placed in imminent danger of a physical attack – the officer using an LBD should first issue a warning to the potential target, and when firing must adhere to the reglementary minimum distance between the officer and the target.
A difference in positions between the police and gendarmerie
But what is precisely that minimum distance? Mediapart studied available interior ministry instructions on the use of the weapon, and no minimum distance was mentioned in those dated 2017, 2018 and 2019. It was only by going back to a document dated 2013 that mention of the minimum distance was found; this stated that LBDs “must not be used against a person who is situated at less than 10 metres” from the officer firing the weapon. An exception to this was a recent update by the gendarmerie on its own rules concerning the use of arms issued to its officers, dated September 1st 2023, in which it warned that, in the case of LBDs, “firing from less than 10 metres, only possible in cases of legitimate self-defence, can produce the risk of important injuries”.
In France, the gendarmerie is a police force which, broadly, serves rural and semi-rural areas, while the national police force (police nationale) is centred on urban areas. However, the gendarmerie also has “mobile” units that are regularly deployed in crowd control operations in the same manner as the national police force’s CRS riot police.
When Mediapart initially contacted the national police force authority, the DGPN, to ask what were the minimum distance rules it issues, it was unable to give an answer, explaining via a spokesperson that instructions concerning the use of LBDs were “currently the subject of rewriting”. It added that police units handling LBDs were using a new type of ammunition, called MDU, which is “less impacting” than the previous type employed.
The MDU ammunition, used in most instances by French police since 2019, is less rigid and less powerful than that used before. But it remains highly dangerous, as demonstrated by the case of Hedi and several other people who lost use of an eye during the revolts and riots in the early summer of this year.
In a document seen by Mediapart, the gendarmerie’s national training centre, the CNEFG, and which is dated September 12th 2022, wrote to the senior administration of the gendarmerie advising that “by the principle of safety and deontology” it should be mandatory that officers should not fire an LBD at a target less than ten metres away.
What is dangerous is that the [interior] ministry and the DGPN have made it ordinary to use the LBD
According to one officer, whose name is withheld here, “within the gendarmerie, to put an end to a crime, [and] if there are no other means to do so, we favour a distance of 30 metres for the use of the LBD. When the danger is closer to us, within a few metres, we attempt to neutralise the individual otherwise than having recourse to the LBD”. He said that while the new ammunition is “less hard and so likely to cause less injuries”, it “nevertheless remains powerful and dangerous, obviously all the more so if it is fired at close quarters”.
A senior gendarmerie officer specialised in crowd control operations, also speaking on condition his name was withheld, underlined: “This new ammunition must not lead to a modification of the rules on the use of the LBD, nor to a slackening in behaviour.” He said the weapon was “the ultimate recourse before the use of the 9mm [pistol issued to officers]. Its use should not be the rule. It is not a weapon for dispersion in demonstrations”.
After Mediapart again contacted the police authorities, the DGPN, to ask for the latest instructions on the minimum distance for the use of an LBD, the request was transferred to the interior ministry which said that a “minimum safety distance will be announced. There is no reason it should be different from that of the gendarmes”.
However, after several repeated requests to the DGPN for clarification on the issue, it finally replied: “The operational range of unique defence munitions [editor’s note, the more recent MDU projectiles] is between 3 and 35 metres. At less than 3 metres, the risk of injury is important.” It added that the “work on the rules applicable to weapons of intermediate force is however ongoing”. The DGPN also said “instructions in this area are common to the domestic security forces, the national police and the national gendarmerie”.
That statement appears to be erroneous given that the gendarmerie prohibits its officers from firing an LBD at less than ten metres from their target.
A police commissaire (equivalent to a superintendent in the UK, or a captain in the US), speaking on condition his name was withheld, told Mediapart: “What is dangerous is that the [interior] ministry and the DGPN have made it ordinary to use the LBD, which initially was supposed to be used in cases of extreme danger, as an ultimate recourse before using an arm [gun].”
A step has been taken to legitimise firing at very close range.
He said that since the LBD had been “experimented in the suburbs [editor’s note, a now common term for the troubled, suburban high-rise housing estates that lie around cities and notably Paris], it has been used, since 2016, in demonstrations, and the mobilisations against labour law reform. By removing all notion of a minimum safety distance, the ministry has erased the dangerousness of this weapon and the injuries it causes”.
“One can always challenge this [minimum] distance, which was already poorly respected, but it nevertheless introduces a safeguard, however much respected,” he added.
Another police officer, specialised in crowd control operations, said that with the presentation of the new ammunition as being less dangerous “a step has been taken to legitimise firing at very close range”, and that “the minimum distance no longer exists”.
“Worse still, we’ve seen the terms used by the manufacture of the ammunition, which talks of ‘operational distance’,” he added.
A circular issued to all police officers and dated August 2nd 2017 details “operational distances” from the target as being between ten and 50 metres for the old ammunition, and between three and 35 metres for the new projectiles. “With a distance as short as three metres, it’s almost shooting at point blank range,” added the officer. “And it’s to invite the police, more than it already did, to shoot at close range with serious risks of injuries. Not only do officers lack training, but with these instructions they’ll have a tendency to pull out their LBD like [they would] a simple baton, and in all lack of clarity.”
He also referred to the “absolutely unjustified” use of the LBD against Hedi in Marseille. In a statement given to the examining magistrate in charge of the current investigation into the case, the police officer who shot at Hedi, identified as Christophe I., said that “there were no particular instructions on the use of weapons”. He said that he had aimed at an “individual in movement” and that aiming at the “trunk” of Hedi’s body it was “the time for the ammunition to arrive that could explain that he was hit in the head”. He denied that Hedi’s serious injury could have been caused by the LBD, and went as far as saying that they could have been caused by “his fall”.
The growing series of serious injuries caused over recent years by LBDs used during policing of demonstrations, and notably the “yellow vest” protests, led France’s then rights ombudsman, Jacques Toubon, to call, in January 2019, for a “suspension” of deployment of the weapon during demonstrations.
Since then, several organisations, including the French lawyer’s union, the Syndicat des avocats de France, the magistrates’ union, the Syndicat de la magistrature, and the CGT trades union have called for the LBD to be prohibited. But all such moves have been in vain; after a France’s Council of State dismissed the case for a ban, unions then took their case before the European Court of Human Rights which, in April 2020, ruled that their submission was inadmissible.
Since then, several organisations, including the French lawyer’s union, the Syndicat des avocats de France, the magistrates’ union, the Syndicat de la magistrature, and the CGT trades union have called for the LBD to be prohibited. But all such moves have been in vain; after the Council of State, France’s supreme court of justice on administrative issues, dismissed the case for a ban, unions then took their case before the European Court of Human Rights which, in April 2020, ruled that their submission was inadmissible, arguing that there had been no violation of rights and freedoms as guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights.
After the Council of State had turned down the application for a ban on LBDs, the largest of France’s police officers’ unions, Alliance, hailed it as “a wise decision”. In a book published this month in France, La police contre la Rue, political scientist Sebastian Roché and documentary maker François Rabaté examine the history of crowd control strategies in France, and also Britain and Germany. They cite the words of Frank Richter, a senior German police officer and police union representative who opposed the introduction of rubber bullet weapons for policing in Germany. “He who wants to fire rubber bullets consciously accepts that that will lead to deaths and the seriously injured,” said Richter in 2012. “That is not tolerable in a democracy.”
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- The original French version of this report can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse