2023-05-02 08:04:19
Jérôme Durain followed the Brigade for the Suppression of Violent Actions (Brav) during the May Day mobilization in Paris. “For a reflection on the techniques of maintaining order, I learned a lot of things,” said the socialist senator.
“I was scared, it’s very violent, it hits very hard on all sides”testified Tuesday, May 2, on franceinfo, Jérôme Durain, socialist senator from Saône-et-Loire who followed the Brigade for the repression of violent actions (Brav) during the mobilization of May 1 in Paris. “It’s very interesting to make the law and to try to understand how policing is done in our country”notes the senator in immersion.
franceinfo: What did you observe?
Jerome Durain: Lots of violence. I was able to observe how the police position themselves, what means they use, the techniques used. It is a background work which is not intended to document police violence, but rather to try to understand how all this is organized after Sainte-Soline and these demonstration sequences which have been very criticized in terms of maintaining of the order.
But yesterday [lundi], I saw a form of restraint in the police system, in the positioning. I feel like we’re done with the trap – which is a good thing. I saw that everything could fly insofar as the number of projectiles which arrive on the forces of order is hallucinating.
Were you surprised by this surge of violence?
It’s trying. What is impressive is the violence that is exerted by people who are there and who have nothing to do, neither with the trade union movement, nor with political aspirations linked to pensions. Me, I was scared, it’s very violent. Indeed, it hits very hard on all sides. I saw injured policemen, I saw injured people with bleeding heads, people who were dragged on the ground. These are very violent circumstances.
“Me, I am a political activist. My role, it is rather normally to go on the side of those who bang on pots, because I am very hostile to this pension reform, but it is very interesting to manufacture the law and to try to understand how policing is done in our country, to be on that side and see the techniques used.”
Jérôme Durain, socialist senatorat franceinfo
Did following the Brav during the May Day demonstration change your outlook on the demonstrations, on the maintenance of order?
I now fully understand the constraints placed on police officers who maintain order and the level of violence they have to face. When you are an observer with a unit, you see the end of the street, you move forward and backward, you are in gas, there is noise, there are agricultural bombs, projectiles. So, I don’t have the vocation to tell you everything that happened in the demonstration. On the other hand, as a parliamentarian, for substantive work, for a reflection on the techniques of maintaining order, I learned a lot of things.
Gérald Darmanin spoke of “extremely violent thugs who came with one objective: to kill cops and attack the property of others”. Would you use the same words as those of the Minister of the Interior?
Me, what I saw is that there are people who are extremely violent. When we come to throw cobblestones, incendiary bombs or Molotov cocktails, we are obviously not there to look for lily of the valley, that’s obvious. On the other hand, I think that if the parliamentary debate is on the one hand the bad policemen, on the other the thugs who want to kill the cop, we will not get out of it.
The question is why, recurrently in this country, we have a problem and systematically, after a demonstration, we see that demonstrators are injured and that we have the feeling that there are techniques of arrest which are excessive. Our job is to try to defuse the debate, to understand what is being implemented, to know what the right tools are. Also understand why it is done better in other conditions, in other countries. In any case, it is not with these declarations that we can find lasting solutions to ensure the maintenance of order in a correct way.
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