Police violence: why France's interior minister must go

JustJust a few days ago at the National Assembly, France’s lower house, interior minister Gérald Darmanin defended the draft “Global security” legislation now proceeding through parliament with an attack on comments by the radical-left France Insoumise party leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon. “Glory, yes, glory for the police and gendarmes,” he declared. A little later, again speaking before Members of Parliament (MPs), he told the assembly: “I am very happy, very happy, to defend the police […] honour upon the police.”

An interior minister is certainly not someone who must “defend the police”. He is the guarantor of public security, that of citizens. He is responsible for the proper use of force, when it proves to be indispensable and in the last resort.

This is clear at least since the civil insurrection of May 1968, when the Paris police prefect Maurice Grimaud , in a letter addressed to all of his staff, warned against any abuse and unjustified violence. Pierre Joxe, interior minister between 1988 and 1991, placed deontology and professionalism at the heart of his management of the French police.

Since his appointment as interior minister in July this year, Gérald Darmanin has continually given guarantees to the most extremist fringes of police unions. An escalating exercise in repression was organised, and has been represented to the point of caricature by the present Paris police prefect Didier Lallement. The newly appointed minister renewed his confidence for the prefect following the shameful repression of migrants on the Place de la République in central Paris on Monday.  

Gérald Darmanin is in confusion over what are republican values and baton charges, as demonstrated in his new law and order strategy. His “republic of order” simply creates disorder, violence and a reduction in our fundamental rights. In that sense, the video published on Thursday by online French news site Loopsider, showing the beating-up of black music producer Michel Zecler by three police officers on November 21st, is an extraordinary representation of the abuses that have unceasingly developed over recent years (click on the video screen below to follow the appalling events of last Saturday evening).

In reaction to the unbridled violence, the interior minister had no words for the victim. Instead, he simply demanded that the Paris police prefect should “suspend, as precautionary action” the police officers concerned, which had not been put into effect over the first five days after the assault.

Yet all is clear to see in the 15 minutes of the incriminating video footage; the police officers carry out an illegal arrest by penetrating in force Michel Zecler's private premises. The punches, kicks and baton assaults on the man can be seen as he tries to protect himself. The victim alleges that the officers proffered insults, including “dirty nigger”.

Several young adults and a minor aged 16 who were present in the studio were threatened. A tear-gas grenade was thrown into the closed room, when the officers drew their guns, placing those present in submission. After that, Zecler was taken into custody and the officers began organising their impunity by giving statements against him, alleging that he was guilty of “insulting behaviour” and “rebellion”, and which the CCTV and neighbours’ video footage of the events show is not true.

Just a few months ago, President Emmanuel Macron and interior minister Darmanin insisted one should not condemn police for violence and racism, relaying the protests made by the various unions representing police officers against such claims.

But to deny what everyone knows for so long is not to defend “the republic and its values”. It is in fact to accept the idea that, in a series of violence, racist insults and homicides (like that of Cédric Chouviat in January this year) committed by the police and constantly covered up or played down by successive interior ministers (Nicolas Sarkozy, Manuel Valls, Bernard Cazeneuve, Christophe Castener and, now, Gérald Darmanin), France’s national police force has become a governmental militia administered by unions among whom some are from the far-right.

The duty of an interior minister is not to liberate the worst in a profession. It is not to terrorise citizens. Because the fact is that yes, we are now fearful of being stopped by police, of taking part in demonstrations, or even sometimes just walking about when police “anti-criminal” brigades or free-running municipal police patrol a district. Yes, the police generally arouse fear, and increasingly so. By abetting that fear, the interior minister is in fact organising public disorder and destroys the promise of the French republic.

Because that fear must be silenced, a darkness must be imposed . That is the sense of the interior ministers “new plan of law enforcement” limiting the rights of journalists in their coverage of demonstrations, and of several measures contained in the draft “Global security” legislation now before Parliament. This includes increased powers for municipal police, the use of drones, and of course the hotly-contested Article 24 which aims to prevent the circulation of images or videos of police actions. Almost as soon as he was appointed, interior minister Darmanin pledged to introduce this, which was demanded by the police union Alliance.

This spiral of government policy, for which improving security is but an illusion such that it increases a divide between society and its police force, only produces violence and disorder. The gratuitous tripping up of a migant by a police officer as seen in the images of Monday evening on the Place de la République, the beating-up of Michel Zecler, who said his attackers called him a “dirty nigger”, the death by suffocation of Cédric Chouviat, the arrests and beatings of journalists, and the rounding up of demonstrators followed by tear-gas charges by police are but some examples of a situation that has become intolerable.

It is high time to establish political responsibilities. On March 13th 2017, at the height of that year’s presidential election campaign, candidate Emmanuel Macron spoke of “a republic of responsibility”, when he said “It is not possible when there is police violence that there is no punishment from the police hierarchy”.

“There is a police commissaire, there is a départemental [county-level] director of public security, there is a prefect and a minister,” he added.

Macron, of course, has changed in his approach. According to French rolling news channel BFMTV , the police officer who was filmed on Monday gratuitously tripping up a migrant fleeing the evacuation of the camp on the Place de la République was a commissaire-divisionnaire, or superintendent, of the anti-criminal brigade from the Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, putting in extra hours while, he said, he was “weary” of his duties. He was not suspended from duty, nor was Paris prefect Didier Lallement disciplined.

The so-called “republic of responsibility” has become that of impunity and denial. French journalist David Dufresne, who has documented on Mediapart the extent of police violence in demonstrations and the role of its internal investigation services, the IGPN, in rubber stamping justification of that violence (in French, here), referred in a recent article (in French, here ) to a pledge contained in the declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen of 1789, proclaimed following the French Revolution: “The guarantee of the rights of man and the citizen require a public force: this force is thus established to the advantage of all, and not for the particular use of those to whom it is entrusted.”     

That force is now only at the service of political powers in desperate straits, and at the service of the electoral ambitions of the interior minister. That represents one more reason for him to go, and quickly.

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• The original French version of this op-ed article can be found here.

English version by Graham Tearse