Five digits to grasp the reality behind police violence

Because sometimes numbers speak louder than words.

861 dead

This is the number of people who died following a police intervention between 1977 and 2022. This figure (like many of those cited in this article) comes from the excellent database compiled by our investigative media colleagues Enough!available in full at this link.

Of these 861 fatalities, 489 were killed by gunfire (57%). 275 more than half of them were unarmed. He is alone 74 of the 489 suspects killed had previously attacked law enforcement officers.

5 police officers reported

For the year 2022 alone, 13 people died as a result of refusing to comply during a roadside inspection. In these cases, only 5 police officers have been charged to date. The others have been released and are not currently being prosecuted.

As a reminder, refusal to comply is liable to 2 years in prison and 15,000 euros well, not a death sentence.

27 years, the average age

Like Nahel, half of the deaths recorded by Enough! they were under 27 years old. Of these, 86 were minors.

A quarter of deaths occurred during or after an identity check

Nearly a quarter of victims (204, or 24%) died during or following an identity check. Also, keep going Enough!129 people died while they were under arrest in a commissariat or gendarmerie, or during their transfer when they had just been arrested.

80 cases of officers off duty

Among the 861 cases identified by Enough! , 80 involved off-duty officers. The identified victims were in the vast majority of cases members of the police officer’s intimate entourage (spouse and/or children), a sad example of how police violence also interferes in the intra-family sphere. The media also records a peak of this violence in 2017: a year earlier, “ the authorization to carry the weapon out of service, for the police and the gendarmes, had been relaxed “.

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