A strange conception of Democracy

Today the French equivalent of the Home Secretary, criticised a court ruling condemning seven police officers to prison terms. Read the facts, my comment follows.

Seven police officers tried in Bobigny for perjury, forgery, and wrongly accusing a man were sentenced yesterday, 10 Dec., to prison terms of six months to one year , an "unexpected" ruling that has attracted the fury of their colleagues.

This conviction marks an end their career in law enforcement for at least five of them: officers are required to have a clean criminal record. (Why not all of them?)

Minutes after the ruling, a call to protest was launched by a police union. At 4:00 p.m., more than 200 police from Seine-Saint-Denis gathered outside the court to the wailing of forty sirens."We are outraged by the decision. For us it is a slur on the profession, "castigated Sebastien Bailly, Assistant Secretary of the police union County Alliance.

The facts: On Sept. 9 at Aulnay-sous-Bois a policeman had his leg crushed, struck by a police car after a chase. He and his colleagues then decided to lie and accuse, in their statements, the driver of the car they were pursuing.

The latter was placed in custody for attempted homicide on a police officer, a crime punishable by life imprisonment with no remission.

They were tried on Nov. 4 for "slanderous denunciation" and "forgery". Three of them were also tried for "aggravated violence": the victim was beaten up after his arrest.

Three defendants were sentenced to 12 months imprisonment, one to nine months, another to 7 months and two to six months. The court emphasized "the gravity of the facts” explaining that the sentence was in "accordance with the degree of participation in the forgery of public documents" and "the attitude to the IGS (Police complaints commission).

"It's totally unexpected," protested Jean-Claude Durimel, counsel for the injured policeman, who was sentenced to 7 months in Jail.

The prosecutor had compared the methods of the police in this case to those of the Gestapo, provoking howls of rage in the court room. At the bar, three police officers had admitted lying and said they had worked together to establish a false report.

I'm sorry to say this but the contempt shown, on so many levels, by this story has not provoked public outrage and indignation. The minister, Brice Hortefeux, in criticising a court decision has broken the principle of the separation of powers, the base on which the Constitution reposes. (He was recently fined by the Tribunal Correctionnel de Paris for racial remarks he made at a meeting of the UMP so perhaps he has an axe to grind.)

The indignation of the police and of the defendants council tells us a lot about the impunity with which the police usually operate.

The injured party was said to be "known to the police" and it is now common practise for the police to leak details of an accused's police record as soon as he or she is arrested. So, it is no surprise that the public were not surprised to lean he was "set up and beaten up" by the men who are supposed to represent law and order.

It shouldn't shock, in a state were corruption is rife and abuse of the public and constitution is commonplace, but it does