The French Interior Minister will study creating a special statute for the police

A week after the pretrial detention of a police officer in Marseille (south of France), for allegedly assaulting a 22-year-old man in early July, French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin met with police unions. According to sources close to the minister, the latter “favorably welcomed [his] proposals and asked the General Directorate of the National Police to study their operational and legal feasibility.”.

The main demand of the organizations is “a modification of article 144 of the criminal procedure code”, according to what Unité-SGP, one of the main police unions of the neighboring country, wrote in a brochure.. By accepting that this law be examined, Gérald Darmanin would be committing himself in fact to “study the law to reconsider the provisional detention of a police officer in the line of duty”, according to the same Unité-SGP brochure..

The union also calls for the creation of a “specific statute for the police officers involved or investigated, in order to avoid their preventive detention”, and eventually “specialized courts and magistrates” for cases involving police officers.

This proposal comes after the controversial statements by Frédéric Veaux, Director General of the French National Police, on Sunday, July 23, when he stated that a police officer “does not belong in preventive detention before his trial […] not even in case of error or serious fault”. The French interior minister backed these comments, telling BFMTV that Veaux “talked like a boss would to his police officers” and that he was “very proud that he was [his] colleague.”.

Speaking to France 2 television channel on Friday, Socialist Party First Secretary Olivier Faure called for the resignation of Gérald Darmanin, who he said “defies the Republic” by supporting Frédéric Veaux despite the “risk of sedition”. He also asked the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to “put order in his own house” because “there cannot be a State within the State”.. In his opinion, “the independence of justice, the separation of powers and the equality of citizens before the law” are threatened by this type of comment.

According to Unité-SGP, the French Minister of the Interior also agreed to “keep the bonuses in addition to the salary during a suspension”.. At present, civil servants continue to receive their civil servant salary if they are suspended, but not their bonuses. Finally, the trade union group wants “total anonymization of the police without fear of rejection by the Constitutional Council”, something that the minister has also promised to work on.

In 2021, the French Constitutional Council censored an article of a new law, which introduced a new crime of disseminating images of police officers in action if the intention was to harm them. Previously, Gérald Darmanin had advocated blurring the faces of officers in the exercise of their duties in videos posted on the Internet.

The organizations affirm that they will remain “attentive” and “determined” to ensure that the commitments made by Darmanin are “respected”.