Ultradynamic editing, slow motion, tracking shots and camera gazes, epic music… On social networks, Andy Cops, peacekeeper serving in the brigade for the repression of violent motorcyclist action (BRAV-M), is a true showcase of the Prefecture of Paris police, a pro who is a past master in the art of staging, big engine version and self-promotion. On Instagram and TikTok, more than 350,000 subscribers delight in his daily life, between sequences taken from on-board motorcycle cameras or shots glorifying his colleagues, all smiles during a meal, or helmeted and caparisoned , walking in line with Gangsta’s Paradisea 1990s hit from Coolio, in the background. With some 6 million views on TikTok, his most popular videos, chases filmed in intervention, explode the counters.
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If he appeals to a wide audience, it is firstly because Andy Cops is not officially a communicator of the Directorate of Public Order and Traffic (DOPC), to which the BRAV-M is attached. . Accessible, willingly interacting with his subscribers, this police officer with a model's physique also knows how to reveal footage of his personal life and play with the codes of the Instagram generation, by taking photos of himself with TV series stars or the famous fitness influencer Tibo InShape . At the risk, sometimes of slipping.
In April 2022, he broadcast a video during which a pair of BRAV-M performs, on duty, a motorcycle jump in an alley of the 20e district of Paris. At a speed higher than the authorized 30 kilometers per hour (km/h), the machine jumps while the passenger pretends to flap his wings, the song I Believe I Can Fly (R. Kelly) in the background. More problematic, in May 2024, the star influencer of the “flicosphere” films himself, while he is out of service, riding a two-wheeler going at 165 km/h on the A71 motorway, or 35 km /h above the speed limit. “I just assume I will get my ticket if I get flashed (…). I'm a big boy”, he responds to a review posted under this video. When asked, the Police Prefecture did not indicate whether this content was validated by its services.
Direct hierarchy on the same wavelength
It must be said that the hierarchy sometimes sets the example of unbridled digital communication. Powerful and adored boss of the DOPC, and as such head of the BRAV-M, Jérôme Foucaud is also an aficionado of social networks, to the point of having added his initials to the official Instagram account of his management. Since August 2020, on the LinkedIn and Instagram platforms alone, he has totaled some 1,100 publications – or practically one per working day – devoted to DOPC units, but also showing him behind the wheel of a riot truck or on patrol with the BRAV-M. Of the 10,600 hashtags associated with his posts on LinkedIn, his favorite platform, #foucaud, his last name, appears 140 times, compared to 58 occurrences for the term… #policier.
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