WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE News Journal Update - (en) France, OCL CA #333 - Faced with police murders, where is the struggle of the victims' families? (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 

For around ten years, I and others have been fighting alongside families
where one of their members was killed by the police or the gendarmerie.
This especially in the Nord and Pas-de-Calais, but not only. This also
led me to come into contact with different groups that more or less
unite these struggles. ---- The first thing I would like to say is that
we cannot imagine the extent of the distress of the members of these
families. These people move between moments of deep despondency and
moments of anger and revolt. When we see them in a video, a documentary
or in the media, they most often appear dynamic and animated by a force
of revolt. But there are also these periods of despondency sometimes
extending over several years, requiring the taking of drugs that knock
you out, and sometimes leading to suicide attempts. Ten years after the
homicide of their loved one, many of these people are still dealing with
anxiety, sleep problems, etc. Many would like to "turn the page", but
cannot. Can we imagine what it's like to lose a loved one when, in most
cases, he or she was young, when he or she died from a homicide (not to
mention a murder) and that this homicide was committed by a police
officer or gendarme?

And, additional suffering for families, almost every time a police
homicide is committed, we will smear the victim. That is to say that,
very quickly after the facts, the authorities (police, prefectural or
judicial) will dig into the victim's past to find the slightest act
reprehensible in the eyes of the law, however insignificant it may be (
1), however distant in time it may be, and let journalists know this. It
is of course a question of stemming as much as possible, in public
opinion, any doubt about the behavior of the police and any movement of
support for the family. And the dominant media immediately pick up this
information, like the good watchdogs of the existing society that they
are. In addition, it has been common for several years for the public
prosecutor's office to open an investigation against the deceased
immediately after the events, implying that he or she bears some
responsibility for what happened. This procedure is mind-blowing since
the death of a person automatically leads to the termination of
proceedings against that person, but it is also a matter of smearing the
victim and trying to justify this murder. Faced with a similar situation
in the United States, Judith Butler says it is as if "there are deaths
that are not worthy of mourning." Families take this in the face.

But all this does not prevent, almost after each murder committed in
this way by police officers or gendarmes, the expression of anger, in
the form of nights of revolt in the neighborhood where the victim lived,
or even in a much more widespread manner as in the case of Zyed and
Bouna or in that of Nahel.

Another ordeal for the family will be the interminable nature of the
legal action in the hope of obtaining the truth and the conviction of
the police officer or gendarme: it can last 10 years or more. In the
vast majority of cases, the judicial institution will do everything to
ensure that there is no conviction. Initially, we entrust the
investigation to the IGPN, or to its equivalent the IGGN if it was a
gendarme who killed, and we try to leave it at that: no investigating
judge. However, we know that the IGPN actually functions as a police
protection body (2). Then come these macabre maneuvers around the body
of the dead: these range from fake autopsies (3) to attempts to carry
out the funeral as soon as possible (4) because, after the funeral, any
counter-autopsy becomes more difficult. Then, it is common for videos to
exist but not to be transmitted to the file or also for parts of the
file to be "lost". Ultimately, in two thirds of cases, this does not
lead to any trial and only 18% of police officers or gendarmes are
sentenced to suspended prison time and only 5% to prison sentences (5) .

Initially, most families, like the majority of the population, see the
police as both "protection for citizens" but also as capable, on
occasion, of blunders and other misdeeds. They also represent the
judicial institution as more or less capable of establishing the truth
and formulating an impartial judgment. Then, they see the police
officers standing together and not hesitating to give false testimony.
They see the police unions supporting the person who killed whatever the
conditions in which he did it. They see the practices of the judicial
institution, "complicit justice",  and also that it happens the same way
for other families. Seeing all this, they come to understand the role of
the police and justice differently: they gradually understand that it is
a system whose purpose is very little to protect people (6), but much
more to maintain a social order that crushes and despises them and
people like them. A social order    which controls and oppresses those
who are the most dominated and exploited socially, but also according to
their geographical origin. They understand that it is very unlikely that
they will ever obtain justice or even recognition of the truth of the facts.

If we consider the names and first names of people killed by the police
or the gendarmerie in France, we immediately see that they are, in the
overwhelming majority, people from Africa, we also find a few people
from South-East Asia. and a few "travelers" as the French authorities
call them. This observation would be enough to demonstrate, if people
still doubted it, that there is indeed racism in the police. This is a
truth which is increasingly repeated by certain media. But what is said
much less often is that almost all the victims lived in relegation
neighborhoods or at least working-class neighborhoods (7). The police
are trigger-happy against people with an immigrant background, but also
against the most exploited, and, of course, they are very often the same.

The number of deaths by the police or gendarmerie has been increasing
gradually since around 2014, when it was on average just under 20 per
year (5), rising to peaks over the last three years: 40 in 2020, 52 in
2021 and 39 in 2022. And let's not forget the daily police violence in
these neighborhoods, nor the injured during demonstrations and elsewhere.

Law L435-1 of 2017 obviously plays a role in this horrible record since
it broadens the conditions under which a police officer is authorized to
use his firearm, particularly in cases of what the police call refusal
to comply. A number of organizations and activist groups are calling for
its repeal. This would obviously be very positive and also it would be a
victory against the main police unions. However, we should not forget
that while this 2017 law certainly played a role in the fact that the
police killed 13 people during these so-called refusals to comply in
2022, and probably other cases, we do not cannot attribute the 39 deaths
that year to him either. Obtaining the repeal of this law would not be
the end of the fight, far from it.

For their part, each family, despite the police and judicial
steamroller, resists and continues to fight and do so with the
conviction that their struggle goes beyond their own drama and that they
are also fighting to ensure that these horrors do not happen again. .
"When we fight for one, we fight for all!"» we hear forcefully in
demonstrations or when families speak.
In the majority of cases, people join the fight of each family, they
acquire know-how, they manage to build an activist group, a collective.
This group will provide the family with material aid and psychological
support and will increase their struggle. The Adama collective is a
well-known example of these support groups, but less well known is that
there are dozens of others who fight with energy and stubbornness. But
too often, when the struggle around this specific case ceases, the group
disintegrates and the experience gained is lost. This is more the case
in the regions than in the Paris metropolitan area, undoubtedly because
the population there is less dense and therefore, fortunately, in the
regions the cases of people killed by the police are more spaced out
over time.

However, some of these collectives have more or less succeeded in
uniting these scattered struggles, in creating networks. We can cite
"Stolen Lives", "Emergency our murderous police", more formerly the MIB
(Immigration and Suburbs Movement) or the "Mutual Aid Truth and Justice"
network which organizes each year the march against police violence and
other state violence, the other organizations fighting or having fought
each according to their own modalities. On this niche of the fight
against police violence, we can also cite "Let's disarm them" or "the
assembly of the wounded", or again "Let's resist police and security
violence together" which has published a monthly bulletin regularly for
more than 20 years, or Bastamag which keeps a register of people killed.
Recently, the National Coordination against Police Violence was created
which brings together around fifty associations, collectives, unions and
political parties, including several among the historical collectives
and networks of this struggle.

Under what conditions will this struggle be able to record victories? In
fact, if we compare the situation to what it was 20 or even 10 years
ago, the theme of police violence is certainly more present in the media
and public opinion. There were several moments when public opinion was
shaken: murder of Cédric Chouviat, Zécler affair, murder of Nahel. But
each time, the police and their unions, the right-wing and far-right
forces use their propaganda by playing on the feeling of insecurity and
raising fear. We saw it again recently: the revolt following the
execution of Nahel was presented as acts of thugs or fools to whom the
only valid reaction is punishment. This goes all the way to the top of
the state. And so, very often, following each new expression of
indignation or anger towards the police, the State responds with new
measures reinforcing their action or new repressive provisions exercised
by the judicial institution. The threat to punish parents following the
revolt at the end of June and beginning of July is a recent example.
What is holding us back in this fight against police violence is also
the lack of long-term political perspective. Some activists argue that
the police would be less violent in other countries (which, firstly,
remains to be demonstrated and, secondly, is this really what we want: a
police force which kills less but which kills anyway?). Others in the
United States recently have come out in favor of partial defunding of
the police. Still others are supporters of repealing the police without
even outlining which society would go with this project. All this is not
very convincing or mobilizing and this lack of perspective is one of the
causes of the difficulties that collectives encounter in gaining
momentum and lasting. What we are missing is a social project.

But it is also a fight at the level of opinion: we will only really move
forward when enough people find all these police crimes unbearable. Now,
there are obviously people who believe that there is far too much
delinquency and that being killed by the police only happens to those
who "play smart", refuse to comply or outright deserve it. (There is
unfortunately no shortage of messages to this effect on social
networks). Then, there are the people who look away because facing this
police violence is certainly more difficult than imagining a police
force doing what it can to "protect citizens", more difficult than to
let oneself be lulled by the dominant discourse which presents the
police as being at the service of the people. That said, we can estimate
that a growing number of people are asking questions about the behavior
and actions of police officers and gendarmes, and the videos showing
their violence help a lot with this.

D.G.

NOTES
1 - Note, in passing, that the font files are used here to...protect the
font. But, here is an example: on November 28, 2022, in Nancy a man was
shot dead by two police officers. We learned almost immediately in the
local press that he had been fined EUR400 for willful damage. There is
therefore reason to understand that if a man was fined EUR400 (all the
same!) for having committed damage (realize it!), we should not be
surprised that we come to this that the police kill him. We are reaching
new heights!
2 - See the Médiapart article: "IGPN: diving into the factory of
impunity" of 06/12/2022
3 - Among numerous cases of faked or dubious autopsies whose results
could have been contradicted by counter-autopsies, we can cite those of
Adama Traoré or Wissam El Yamni    (see the book "Wissam vérité")
4 - In the frequent cases where the victim comes from a country where
Islam is in the majority, then the tradition is to bury the dead in the
country. Often, the authorities will play on this to remove the body as
quickly as possible by going so far as to organize transport by plane,
and offering passports to the family.
5 - See: bastamag.net/webdocs/police/
6 - On this subject, we can read "Wissam vérité", written by the brother
of Wissam El Yamni killed by the police in 2012 in Clermont-Ferrand
7 - On this level, the situation is obviously similar in other
countries. In the USA, for example, Florian Gulli author of "Antiracism
Betrayed" says that racism in the police is a fact, but he explains that
in the USA, there is an over-representation of blacks among those killed
by the police , he also says that about half of those killed are white.
But he also says that what unites these two categories is that they
almost all live in dilapidated neighborhoods.

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article3951
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