Safety in Lausanne –
“I don’t know a police officer who would go out without his weapon, given the context”
The president of the Association of Police Officers of Lausanne reacts to the vote of the Municipal Council to arm officers less.
Posted today at 4:47 p.m.
The Association of Police Officers of Lausanne has more than 600 members. Its president says he is surprised by the postulate voted on Tuesday evening at the Municipal Council, asking that agents intervene unarmed under certain conditions. (KEYSTONE/Cyril Zingaro)
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It is a decision of the Municipal Council of Lausanne, taken Tuesday evening by a majority of left-wing elected officials, which questions: disarm the municipal police in some of its missions or interventions. What do the first interested parties think? Cyril Portmann is the president of the Association of Police Officers of Lausanne (AFPL). An association which today has more than 600 members. He reacts.
“Given the security situation in Switzerland at the moment, and in particular the risk of attacks, we are surprised by the content of this postulate,” continues Cyril Portmann. For him, the police officer’s mission is to protect citizens, like himself of course. He may therefore be called upon to act at any time. “A force majeure event can occur at any time. And if the only police officer present at the time is unarmed, what happens? Not being armed during our missions or our interventions clearly weakens the response that we could provide in such circumstances.”
“We cannot predict everything”
The postulate approved Tuesday evening, which comes from environmental advisor Ilias Panchard and which was sent back to the Municipality for report, evokes the missions that could be carried out without weapons. Like the supervision of demonstrations. Cyril Portmann: “But look what happened at the Magdeburg Christmas market in Germany last December, or during the national holiday in Nice in 2016! We cannot predict everything. Anticipate everything.” And simple neighborhood or family conflicts? “Even for these interventions, the situation we find may be different from that which was initially presented to us. Everything can degenerate at any moment.”
The other argument put forward in the postulate is that the simple fact of carrying a weapon could contribute to the escalation of tensions. “In my entire career, I have never heard a police officer say that his service weapon prevented him from easing tensions and dialoguing. The weapon in reality, most of the time, spends its entire life in its holster,” assures the president of the AFPL. “But with the above mentioned, I don’t know a police officer who would go out without his weapon.”
Strengthen proximity with the population
“I have never talked about removing the use of firearms from all municipal police, but only for certain tasks and missions that it is up to the Municipality to define,” specifies Ilias Panchard. However, he assumes the idea that being, for certain very specific missions, not equipped with a firearm “while keeping the other weapons with which the agents are equipped” would make it possible to strengthen the proximity between the police and the whole of the population.
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Laurent Antonoff has been a journalist in the Vaud section since 1990. After covering the regions of Northern Vaud and the Riviera, he joined the Lausanne editorial team at the turn of the millennium. A novelist in his spare time, he won the Berner Zeitung Local Journalism Prize in 1998.More info
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