Mixed with emotion, the reactions, more pragmatic, flared up a few hours after the tragedy that occurred in Nanterre this Tuesday, June 27. In the morning, a 17-year-old young man was shot and killed by a police officer following a refusal to comply. Since then, the law of February 28, 2017, relating to public security, has been under fire from critics.
“According to researchers, this multiplication of tragedies is particularly linked to the entry into force of the law (…) of February 28, 2017 relating to public security”, split the Communist deputies in a press release this Wednesday, June 28 . For their part, the Insoumis, in the forefront of which Manuel Bompard, Mathilde Panot and François Ruffin, did not fail to recall that they have been calling “since January” for the opening of a commission of inquiry into “the consequences of the 2017 law which allowed the police to shoot in the event of refusal to comply”. On the side of the Senate, the elected PS of Saône-et-Loire Jérôme Durain denounces a law which “leads to this type of situation”.
The law of February 28, 2017 relating to public security was brought by Bernard Cazeneuve when the latter was successively Minister of the Interior and Prime Minister. Originally, it was to respond to the Molotov cocktail attack by four police officers in October 2016 while they were carrying out a surveillance mission in a priority security zone in Viry-Châtillon (Essonne). An event that had aroused great emotion from the entire profession, especially since it occurred in a context of social tensions a few weeks after the demonstration against the El Khomri law, during which a police officer had been seriously injured by the same Molotov cocktail. “Angry” police officers had not hesitated, outside the union framework, to demonstrate and defy their right of reserve to demand, among other things, a relaxation of the conditions of self-defense, aligned with those of the gendarmes.
In its final version, the law of February 28, 2017 has several components, including the use of weapons by law enforcement. The one that is worth today to the text to be called into question. A passage, more specifically, is singled out: “National police officers (…) may use their weapons in a strictly proportionate manner (…): When they cannot immobilize, otherwise than by the use of weapons, vehicles (…) whose drivers do not obey the stop order and whose occupants are likely to perpetrate, in their flight, attacks on their life or their physical integrity or to those of others”.
But many politicians criticize the text for its lack of clarity. During the session of questions to the government, on Tuesday in the Assembly, the Green MP Sabrina Sebaihi notably reaffirmed “the urgency of reconsidering the law of February 28, 2017” which she considers to be “too ambiguous in its wording and which gives the police, she says, a very questionable reading about the use of fire.” In June 2022, CNRS research director Fabien Jobard alerted France Info already to the risks of this law which “came to confuse clear texts”. A “confusion” maintained, among other things, by the fact that the law is subject to interpretation. How to demonstrate that the driver, by refusing to comply, would “damage their physical integrity or that of others”? And where is the limit of “strictly proportionate”?
While many Nupes elected officials have deplored since Tuesday a 40% increase in police shootings and brandished the figure of 13 deaths in 2022, the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin declared that “since the 2017 law, there has been had fewer fatal shots by the police”, without, however, giving figures. During the session of questions to the government in the Senate on Wednesday, he notably recalled that “the 2017 law on the refusal to comply was taken in different times, those of the terrorist attacks” and never authorized “that police can shoot at a car”.
Same speech on the side of the boss of the Republicans, who is satisfied that there is “a law, and rules which protect those who protect us: the police”, to whom Éric Ciotti wanted to reiterate his support. Invited to the Public Senate set, Senator LR from the Alpes-Maritimes Dominique Estrosi-Sassone also warned of the risks of “legislating in haste”. And to recall on his Twitter account that “emotion should not take the place of the right”.
In its report, the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN) counts 157 shots “in the direction of moving vehicles” in 2021, compared to 110 in 2014, with a peak of 202 in 2017 – the year of the promulgation of the public safety law. Nevertheless, if the IGPN reports a slight increase in the number of shots – which have fluctuated between 147 and 202 since 2017, against 110 and 137 over the period 2012-2017 – refusals to comply have also increased by 16.5 % over one year, as shown by the report of the National Interministerial Road Safety Observatory published in 2020. The LR mayor of the 7th arrondissement of Paris, Rachida Dati, like Éric Ciotti, notably deplored “the ‘increase in refusals to comply’: “It is urgent to review the devices to combat them effectively”, without elaborating on the 2017 law decried by the left.
