The two police officers risk six months in prison, with a one-year ban on the person who slapped him.
At the bar, Antoine J, the chief brigadier, grits his teeth. “That day, I was not fit to work.” Too many personal and family worries. He had to consult a psychologist to accept. “I still hadn’t understood the gesture.” “Because it’s not him,” says his lawyer, Hugues de Lacoste Lareymondie. He is a cop that his colleagues describe as exemplary. “No, not him.” That’s the reaction in the heat of the moment, at the police station. 36 letters of congratulations in the file, insists the police officer’s lawyer.
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Laurent P, his colleague, did not come. “Because he’s off work. Because he can’t, explains his lawyer Lionel Béthune. Because he does not recognize himself in these words,” he is the sports educator of neighborhood kids, young people of all origins and who, from the outset, in front of his superiors, in front of the police, recognized that he had slipped.
“But we are all fallible. Everyone can lose their nerves.”
The situation was tense. Three guys arrested at the station by the municipal police. One of them tried to sexually assault a young girl on the train. One of them, drunk, not really cooperating, at the police station, “but not aggressive”, the municipal police testified. They also said they felt the tension.
And the case became exemplary because Antoine J.’s body-worn camera was triggered unexpectedly. “We never film in search rooms.” A officer who discovers the video. Hierarchy, parquet. IGPN. Exemplary file, also estimated the lawyer of MRAP, the Movement for Friendship Between Peoples. Lionel Béthune tried in vain to oust him from the debates by pleading that the insult was not public, that he was not mandated by the victim, who has since disappeared from the radar, the association’s lawyer framed the debate: “the victim is not just the one who has been insulted. It is the human group that these remarks are aimed at.”
Everyone has seen the video. And that casts doubt. “No one reacts or seems surprised. This would not be something usual,” asks President Ancelin Nouaille. “The constituent elements are indisputable,” deduced Mathieu Auriol, the prosecutor. “A very bad show, a 21-year-old policewoman who witnesses the scene. It is a poison which poisons our social relations, which fuels anti-police behaviour”, he said, demanding suspended prison sentences, a ban on working “to meet the expectations of citizens, to allow reconstituting teams”.
“Clemency or indulgence”
“A unique act. A slap that hits what it found on its way.” Hugues De Lacoste Lareymondie preferred to recall “21 years of police, a remarkable past, self-control. But we are all fallible. Everyone can lose their nerves.”
“I defend this man one year from the end of his career.” Lionel Béthune also described his client, an honest cop who cannot be characterized by racism. “He doesn’t take responsibility for his words because it’s not him. He should not have. You will have to choose between clemency and indulgence,” he told the judges. “Both are not proud of it because they have a conscience. But they may have been proud of their commitment.”
Judgment on July 4.
