After getting a lot of backlash when it was first posted, this testimonial below was updated on April 30, 2019. Find the new part at the end of the article.
April 29, 2019
This testimony was sent to us by a reader of Madmoizelle, who is part of the municipal police.
The topic is delicate, the editorial staff reminds us respect for the people who testify about the magazine it is required in your reactions.
The policemen, ” you commit suicide »
Paris, April 20, 2019.
Like every Saturday since November, two groups face off, both wearing helmets, in a cloud of tear gas under a deep blue sky, one dressed in black and blue, the other in black and yellow.
And suddenly.
” SUICIDE YOURSELF! »
Sung several times, in unison, from black and yellow to black and blue.
I’m a cop and my heart stopped.
I am a 27 year old police officer.
I’m 27, I’m a cop and my partner is a cop.
Finally… I’m a municipal police officer, an ex-cop, and he’s a career cop. But for a minority of people who hate us, we are ” bastard cops ».
And for those people, we don’t deserve to live; there is no life under our clothes, we are not parents, brothers or sisters, we don’t love anyone and we don’t have a beating heart.
We have no past, no future, we have nothing that justifies our existence on Earth and therefore that we live.
They don’t hesitate to set fire to our company vehicle while we’re in it, to pounce on us to avoid a check just because they’ve been drinking a little… But not enough to lose their licence.
He lived.
My real life as a cop
How many people really know what is our job? Our judicial skills, our training, our fields of action?
How many know that the gendarmes have guard shifts, times in which they must be immediately available to intervene on various facts (from a simple stray horse to a fatal accident with several vehicles, sometimes in line), without any impact on salary?
That the National Policeman, whom you hate this evening for having denied you (suspensions and cancellations are up to the prefecture AND the court) the driving license for seeing too drunk, announced the same morning to a father and his children that the mother was dead in a traffic accident, hit by a drunk driver who died without a license?
And all this after 36 hours of police detention in unheated and moldy premises?
How many men and women beaten, children victims of rape, these women and men see in the course of their careers, even more detectives and specialized detectives…
Discover, after making a file the size of a concrete block, that the person in question will not be sentenced to any prison sentence?
Because I became a police officer
I chose to be a cop because I wanted to help and put the wicked in prison.
I do my job with passion and dedication, as humanely as possible (although my legal skills as a municipal police officer are very limited), while some don’t even consider me a human being.
AND I don’t like agents who do their job “too hard”that because of their behavior they are remembered only by them.
Who goes on strike, who makes racist and sexist comments, who makes everyone else forget, who does their job in a respectful, dignified and ethical way.
I’m a policewoman and I’m scared
This text is a bit like a cry from the heart, why Today I am afraid, I suffer.
I’m scared of dying just because I have “POLICE” written on my back, I’m scared of losing my partner, or losing my job because someone throws a Molotov cocktail at him, or acid.
I would like to say ” HEY! We also have good people! We also have people who want things to change! “. In fact it’s a bit like everywhere, no fusion, idiots are everywhere.
But I love my job, even if in a utopian world we shouldn’t exist…
So I wonder why are we so hatedwhile it is the human being himself who created this profession.
Because the human being is the only inhabitant of the Earth who is unable to live with respect for the other members of his species, with respect for the work of the other, for the life of the other.
As police officers we would like to be actors in the improvement of coexistence, unfortunately we are the privileged spectators of its degradation, sitting in the front row.
I wish my job didn’t exist.
I am a policewoman and I am human
I’m a policeman, but I’m also a life, a sister, a daughter, a partner.
Of course, I also think about all those people who trust uswho see us as more than just a number on a uniform.
All these people who, like the “good cops”, are more discreet than the “anti”, but certainly more numerous.
I think of all those children whose eyes are full of stars when they see motorcyclists from the gendarmerie or the police. I think of all those people who needed us and were able to find listening, advice, help, support and justice.
Because our job after all isn’t even to put the bad guys in jail: it’s to catch them so that justice can put them in jail. But that’s another story…
I read your comments and your exchanges made me think. I feel like I haven’t been able to convey what I wanted to say, so I pick up my pen to try and do it pass my message.
The gendarmerie, a patriarchal environment
I remembered when I got involved. I thought the work would be “like on the posters”… the reality is quite different.
I found out a patriarchal and archaic environment, that of the gendarmerie. I left it for that, even though she brought me a lot.
In particular, it taught me to overcome my shyness, to gain self-confidence: you need it to have the courage to control people, sometimes give them fines, when you are a very young woman!
My life as a municipal police officer
After the gendarmerie, I wanted to pass the competitions to be a national (and not municipal) police officer. Théo was in full swing, this young man penetrated in the anus by a truncheon during his arrest.
I didn’t want to become this racist, violent, misogynistic police trope. I became a municipal police officer.
Some of you also noted in the comments that as a municipal police officer, I shouldn’t be too concerned about the demonstrations because supervising them is not part of my duties.
It’s true, and one day I would like to tell my true daily life as a municipal police officer. But it will be when I change town, because currently, my job is too close to that of a national police officer…
In fact, the national police, where I live, lack of staffso I find myself carrying out missions that deviate from my traditional duties, such as emergency police dependent actions, or arrests (thefts, fights, drug sales, etc.).
That’s why I’m going to change my place of residence: to get a job as a municipal police officer.
The Yellow Vests and me
Let’s go back to the demonstrations, of which I speak at the beginning of my testimony, written a few days after the “shock” of this ” commit suicide “.
This ” commit suicide which followed Don’t kill yourself, join us it was the change that prompted me to write, but I was already aware of the catastrophic situation between us and the people.
I would like to say, first of all, this the Yellow Vests, I understand them.
I understand that these people are fed up, fed up with violence, with precariousness, fed up with suffering. I understand anger in the face of a feeling of abandonment, in front of the fatigue experienced week after week.
I myself, at the beginning of my career, the state paid me 780 euros a month. I was working 45 hours a week. I needed this very state, its social benefits, to make ends meet.
Burnout among law enforcement
I get in contact with national police officers and CRS, some can’t take it anymore.
I am thinking of this policeman, normally assigned to the emergency police, mobilized as reinforcements to monitor demonstrations, who lost his footing and asked not to perform this function again after 15 days.
“It’s not my job, I’m not trained, I have no equipment to protect me, I have to get out of there. »
I think of this CRS who explained to me that in a month and a half he should have two days off, and not after. To the nerves of him on the verge of breaking.
In this regard, I refer you to the excellent comic by Emma: The story of a peacemaker.
I want to do my job with humanity
French society is in bad shape. I completely understand angry people who hate cops.
But I can’t believe leaving the police is going to change that. On the contrary, I want it to improve from within.
My view of my work is based on humanity, understanding, dialogue. Even when I issue a ticket, I’m ready to argue.
Each person is unique, has its own problems (personal, financial…), it is possible to adapt.
I would like confidence to return, I would like the police to protect the French men and women who demonstrate, so that they can exercise this right in peace and without fear.
Police brutality and racism
I feel sorry for everyone who has experienced police violence. I condemn them, and I will be the first to denounce a colleague who is alleged to have authored them.
I also react to some who insinuate that we don’t say anything to Jean-Michels but that we have fun with people with names of foreign origin: in my eyes, there is nothing worse than “white collar”.
These men, essentially white, essentially, who derive from these characteristics an enormous sense of impunity and protection.
The type of man who looked down on me when, as a 24-year-old cop, I gave him a speeding ticket in front of a school, he tried to intimidate me because he’s the boss of a company and drives a vehicle so big that my room…
My anger is not directed at the French people
Yes, I’m angry. Yes, I laugh.
But I address it to high-ranking officials who make people suffer, who turn a blind eye to personnel, who shit on the code of ethics, who refuse our police and gendarmerie services to move forward with the times, who remain in an archaic system that goes straight against the wall, a wall made up of millions of French people.
Yes, we serve the state, in my case the municipality, but above all we serve the people. AND I want to serve the people.
Everything has to change. But it’s not by leaving the police that I’ll be able to change anything, or at least try to.
Change the character, I still believe it
If I leave one day, it will be because I no longer feel capable of doing my job with humanity and kindness.
For now I hold on to people who say thank you, thank you for helping me, thank you for doing my job, thank you for protecting or bailing them out.
I cling to the fact that no one has complained about the way I work, about the treatment I gave them.
Being a policewoman, moreover when you’re a young and feminist woman, is not easy every day, because the environment is deeply patriarchal. But I refuse to tell myself that “it is so and not otherwise”.
If every day I can do my job as I see it, with humanity and tolerance, and as the population expects of me, then I will be satisfied.
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Source: Madmoizelle
Mary Crossley is an author at “The Fashion Vibes”. She is a seasoned journalist who is dedicated to delivering the latest news to her readers. With a keen sense of what’s important, Mary covers a wide range of topics, from politics to lifestyle and everything in between.
