2023-07-01 12:00:00
The death of young Nahel, 17, killed by the shooting of a policeman during a refusal to comply Tuesday in Nanterre, sparked nightly riots in several French cities. Documented by a video, which calls into question the first version provided by the police who claimed that the young man was driving in their direction, this “unacceptable and inexcusable” drama, in the words of Emmanuel Macron, is part of a series of events whose repetition questions.
The policeman behind the shooting has since been indicted, but the young man is the third person to die in such circumstances since the beginning of 2023, and the sixteenth since January 2022. possibility of police shooting in this context, adopted in 2017 under the Hollande government, has since come under fire from critics.
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Aligning the shooting powers of the police with those of the gendarmes, article 435-1 of the Internal Security Code (CSI) provides that the police can shoot in the event of refusal to comply, if they do not can stop the car other than by the use of a weapon, and if they consider the driver “likely to perpetrate attacks on their life or their physical integrity and that of others”. Previously, the police were placed under the same regime of self-defense as the rest of the citizens.
Faced with criticism, Gérald Darmanin assured that there had been no increase in fatal shootings since its adoption, and that these had even dropped. An assertion difficult to verify, since the Ministry of the Interior has only recorded fatal shootings by police officers in the event of refusal to comply since 2020 (2020: 1; 2021: 2; 2022: 13; 2023: 3).
Nevertheless, a statistical study, in the course of publication, but summarized in the review Esprit, identifies and analyzes the evolution of the number of fatal shootings of police officers in the face of moving vehicles before and after the adoption of the law in 2017. Its result establishes a correlation between the increase in shootings and the adoption of the law.
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Simon Varaine, researcher specializing in the control of police forces in Europe, associated with the Pacte laboratory (Sciences Po Grenoble), co-author of the study with Paul Le Derff and Sebastian Roché, answered questions from the Point.
Point : Have the fatal shootings of police officers when refusing to comply increased since 2017?
Simon Varaine : Between March 2017 and October 2022, where our study ends, 25 people were killed by police fire when they refused to comply, compared to 4 between July 2011 and February 2017. The number of people killed in this context was therefore multiplied by 5, even by 6, since the adoption of the law in 2017.
How can you establish it?
What emerges strikingly from our study is that this increase concerns only the national police: this does not apply to the gendarmerie, nor to the German and Belgian police, which we have also studied. Only the French national police see such a significant increase in the number of fatal shootings against moving vehicles.
We also observe that fatal police shootings only increase when they involve people in moving vehicles, unlike fatal shootings targeting armed people, which have remained stable. However, the 2017 law only modifies the right of the national police to shoot in the event of refusal to comply in vehicles: the only fatal shots to increase are those for which it has widened the framework, not the others.
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But the refusals to comply have increased?
Yes, dangerous refusals to comply, putting others at risk of death or injury, have increased over the past decade. They went from 2,520 in 2012 to 5,247 in 2021: a significant increase, but not at the same level as that of fatal shootings, and started before 2017. Especially, if there was a correlation between the increase in denials of dangerous compliance and that of fatal shots, there should be a similar explosion in the number of shots on the gendarmerie side and on the national police side. However, it is not the case.
Faced in the same proportions as the police with dangerous refusals to comply, the gendarmes fired much less. However, they benefit from the same legal framework as the police, and for longer: the 2017 law aimed to align the powers of the police with those of the gendarmes. They don’t use it the same way.
How to explain this difference between police and gendarmerie?
This is only an interpretation, but I think that, if this differential increase in the number of fatal shootings between police and gendarmes depends on the adoption of the law, it also depends, in my view, on the interpretation that has been made by the respective directions of the two bodies.
These differences in interpretation may have given rise to different signals sent to the teams. Following the law, the management of the national police told its agents that it was now possible to shoot without immediate threat, whereas, in its practice, the gendarmerie follows a much more restrictive interpretation and use of this law.
The information provided by the IGPN is incomplete. What data did you work with?
To make up for the lack, we have used open data, in particular by compiling press articles, as does BastaMag, which has one of the best databases on the subject. My colleague Paul Le Derff devoted his thesis to it.
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There has nevertheless been a recent improvement in terms of transparency on fatal shootings of police officers in the event of refusal to comply. The cases of the years 2020, 2021 and 2022 were revealed by the IGPN, which was not the case until then.
But there is still progress to be made: this transparency should be systematized, which has been the case for twenty years in England and Belgium, and we should be able to access the monthly numbers of shots from the national police.
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