Anger among the municipal police officers who demonstrated yesterday Tuesday to the sound of “France on the march, march or die…”

2024-03-06 18:41:39

FRANCE – “Negotiations have been open for a year with the Ministry of the Interior and Ms. Dominique Faure (Minister Delegate in charge of Local AuthoritiesEditor’s note), except that these are masquerade negotiations”, deplores Cédric Michel, president of the Municipal Police Defense Union (SDPM). So, yesterday, Tuesday March 5, around 2000 of them, almost 10% of the profession, demonstrated in Paris to make their demands heard.

While the role of municipal police officers in maintaining order and public safety is expanding, their professional and social conditions have not changed for many years.

So the arrival of the Olympic Games, during which these civil servants will be widely called upon to support the national police and gendarmes, offering them favorable circumstances to hope to finally obtain social progress, they express their fed up.

They therefore met in Paris to try to influence the resistance to “taking out the checkbook” from the State and the Association of Mayors of France. Their cup is full, and they intend to make it heard.

Municipal police officers denounce low salaries, which can stagnate at around 1,300 euros net, even after many years of seniority, obstacles to their professional development, and pensions which cap at 1,000 euros per month, or below of the poverty line, estimated at 1,161 euros per month per INSEE in 2021.

These municipal police officers also point out a lack of recognition of their work and its difficulties, and too great a disparity between their income and professional benefits and those of the national police. “You should know that municipal police officers, every day, all day long, are insulted, hit, they intervene in very serious risks, in brawls, even in the terrorist risk sometimes. We unfortunately deplore victims of duty, and compared to our colleagues in the national police, the gap is gigantic,” explains Cédric Michel.

They are supported in their demands by the National Rally, whose group tabled, last February, a proposed resolution aimed at “recognizing the commitment of municipal police officers in the service of the security of the French”.

RN deputies Romain Baubry and Yoann Gillet also came yesterday to join the demonstration.

Elected officials take note of the increase in the prerogatives of these municipal agents, “without the social aspect of their function evolving accordingly”.

The demands brought by the unions representing these municipal police officers, and brought before the National Assembly by RN deputies, are “things that are just normal, the basis, to recognize the commitment of municipal police officers to the safety of the French,” declared Romain Baubry to France-Soir.