ESSENTIAL MAINTENANCE – On this twelfth day of the pension reform demonstration, we welcome Alexandre Langlois, ex-police territorial intelligence agent, ex-secretary general of the Vigi police union and author of several books, including recently “Try democracy. At the masked ball of Macronie, to Talma editions. It is an implacable indictment against a “very authoritarian drift of the use of the police” by the government that he comes to deliver to us. He accuses neither more nor less the government, not only to encourage violence, but also to be voluntarily at the origin and to assume it.
The former police officer underlines that in terms of maintaining order, the police cannot intervene on their own initiative. They must wait for authorization to act but also obey orders immediately.
However, Alexandre Langlois denounces political manipulation aimed at worsening certain situations and in fact, the relations between the forces of order and the population. He gives the example of the use of traps which are prohibited because scientifically proven dangerous, or dispersal orders issued while demonstrators are prevented from leaving.
According to him, orders to disperse the processions could have been given by staffs in constant contact with the Ministry of the Interior, while the police were kept in the dark that all the exits to get out of the demonstration were closed. They charged people without knowing that the latter could not obey them, and of course the latter reacted, becoming violent in their turn.
Alexandre Langlois also denounces the bans on neutralizing black blocs until it’s too late. The former intelligence agent also points out that the violent radical elements are perfectly known, and undermines the widespread idea that the law would prohibit them from being prevented, upstream, from going to the demonstrations: if you want, we can, moreover it has already happened.
He also denounces a lack of will to severely punish certain police officers, rare, who are guilty of unjustified violence, and affirms that it is a question of the political choice to thus want to show “which police officers we want to protect”.
The former police officer underlines that any injury inflicted by a member of the police force is illegitimate if the injured person is not then arrested: he violated the law or not, but it is not “the policeman to play Judge Dredd (Hollywood film with Sylvester Stallone, editor’s note) in the street”.
He affirms that the maligned BRAV-M, made up of volunteers seconded from other services, are set up to go “do the helping hand” and that it is quite easily tolerated that they may be difficult to identify in the event of a problem.
Regarding the other police officers, who remain in their own units, according to Alexandre Langlois, identification is not a problem as long as the administration wishes it.
The former trade unionist also points to a lack of police officers which forces the authorities to mobilize officials with little or no training in maintaining order, and therefore more likely to make mistakes, to supervise the demonstrations.
Alexandre Langlois also points out that the mobile gendarmes or the CRS, specialists in maintaining order and therefore extremely well trained, were very rarely incriminated during the demonstrations of the yellow vests.
In summary, the former police officer denounces a democratic degradation, where the forces of order are no longer used to serve the people but the designs of a government which no longer takes into account the will of the people says “sovereign” with the complicity of parliamentarians who hunker down “cowardice”because they “want to keep their chair”.
According to him, the democratic ideal drawn up under the Third Republic where “the ballot must replace the gun” is betrayed and the policing techniques chosen by the rulers generate violence.