Two police officers were sentenced Thursday by the Bobigny criminal court to four years in prison for seriously injuring a motorist and his passenger after refusing to comply, in August 2021, in Stains, in Seine-Saint-Denis .
Aged 30 and 33, they are also permanently banned from serving in the national police and banned from carrying weapons for five years. During the trial at the beginning of October, the prosecutor requested a year in prison under electronic monitoring.
The crew of the Stains anti-crime brigade, in civilian clothes and in an unmarked car, carried out this check on the night of August 15 to 16, 2021.
Eight bullets in six seconds
An amateur video widely distributed on social networks captured part of the intervention which followed a first exchange between the officials and the drunk driver.
One of the police officers tries to enter the passenger compartment of the car. The driver engages reverse. The two police officers fired several times, aiming at the motorist. Eight bullets are fired in 6.25 seconds.
The two brigadiers used their weapons for the first time. During the trial, they insisted that they considered that their lives were in danger.
“No self-defense” according to the court
On the contrary, the court considered that the police “could not rely on article 435-1 of the internal security code”which governs the use of weapons by law enforcement because they were not “not in uniform” is munis d'“badges and armbands […] apparent » during this nocturnal intervention.
“Moreover, there is also no self-defense when you used your weapons”added the president of the 14e correctional chamber of the Bobigny court, highlighting a “disproportion between the shots which seriously injured the victims and the behavior of the driver”.
The police's lawyer appeals
“This is a decision that we do not understand and which we are appealing immediately”reacted to theAFP the police lawyer, Me Laurent-Franck Liénard.
Nordine, the driver of the vehicle, shed a few tears while listening to the deliberations. Hit by five bullets in the abdomen, arms, groin, femoral artery and thorax, he was prescribed 127 days of total incapacity for work (ITT). He has since been disabled and lost 10 centimeters in one of his arms. Bullet fragments remain in his body.
Merryl, his passenger, was shot through, had her spleen removed and had 100 days of ITT.
