2023-09-29 21:46:44
A gendarme whose RIO is visible, during a demonstration against pension reform, in Paris, April 14, 2023. GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT / AFP
A compact crowd came to attend the austere hearing of the Council of State, which was to examine, Friday September 29, two sensitive matters, which both concern the police and to which the Ministry of the Interior is radically hostile: the controls of discriminatory identity, “facies”; and the wearing of a number for the police. It is supposed to be obligatory, but is hardly so, and remains the only way to file a complaint in the event of illegitimate violence.
Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers In France, “facial identity control is a systemic, structural, institutional problem”
The issue of identity checks is particularly interesting. First, because it is massive: no one knows, and especially not the Ministry of the Interior, how many checks take place every day. The National Assembly had mentioned the figure of 14 million per year, but they are neither recorded nor, a fortiori, controlled. Then, because these facial checks are amply documented by around ten studies, notably by the Defender of Rights, which calculated, in 2017, that a young Black person or one of Arab origin was twenty times more likely to be controlled by the police. Finally, because it is the first group action, carried out by six associations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Open Society Justice Initiative, that the Council did not have to know about.
The Council of State thus met on Friday in its most solemn formation, the litigation assembly: 17 of the highest administrative magistrates, including the presidents of sections and the presidents of chambers, gathered for major cases. It is the public rapporteur who speaks first, but his opinion in no way prejudges the decisions of the Council – fortunately for the associations.
No “culpable failure” of the State
After a long legal dissertation, Esther de Moustier considered that the high administrative jurisdiction, given the separation of powers, could not force the administration to impose a new public policy, as the Council could not “become neither an administrator nor a legislator”. She recognized that there was indeed “individual cases” of discrimination – the associations’ writings are full of them – but she judges that they do not seem to her “become part of a systemic practice » of the police.
She believes that the State is already doing what it can, by training its agents, by initiating sanctions, the ministry has opened two digital platforms for complaints – unfortunately almost deserted – and the Minister of Justice has even recommended to prosecutors to go on site to check the controls. There is therefore no “culpable deficiency” of State.
You have 59.59% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
#scourge #facial #control #Council #State