The sun is beating down on the forecourt of the Strasbourg police station at 12:30 p.m. About sixty police officers, women and men, magistrates and lawyers, as well as former members of the house, who have come to show their solidarity, gather . On placards, the politician Georges Clemenceau, the founder of the “tiger brigades” in 1907, ancestors of the judicial police (PJ), sheds tears. The masks that cover the faces of the police are crossed out with a yellow sticker ” Do not open “. “The police do not speak [ils sont soumis au devoir de réserve]and there we have no right to speak on this reform”slips one of them by way of explanation.
Most of the officials interviewed insisted on their anonymity. Michel Thomas, he wants to give his name. Three years from retirement, he launches: “If I have any blame for this, it will be on my honor roll. » The sturdy guy, with jet-black, wavy hair, started out in a police station on 15e district of Paris. He arrived at the Strasbourg PJ in 1996. During his career with the judicial police, he worked in the research and intervention brigade (BRI), then in the criminal brigade. He now deals with games and sports betting. He glances at the assembled men and women: “All those who can are there, the others are in operation or in training. »
The announced reform, wanted by the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, is widely worrying in the ranks of the Strasbourg PJ, which has around forty investigators and celebrated its centenary in 2020. The testimonies collected all go into the Same direction. The merger of this body with the public security staff, under the authority of a departmental director, goes, according to them, against the way of working of these civil servants and risks diluting their expertise and their responsiveness.
“We are not here to claim bonuses or resources, but just to do our police work properly”comments Michel Thomas, who also criticizes a method without consultation. “When he came here, Mr. Veaux [Frédéric Veaux, le directeur général de la police nationale] met the general staff and the unions, but who know little about our problems. We, the base, we were not heard. » Today, the National Association of the Judicial Police, created on August 17 in reaction to the reform, has 2,000 members, out of 5,000 judicial police officers throughout France.
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