“Inside OCRVP: The Special Unit Fighting Unpunished Violent Crimes and Cold Cases”

TAll the violent victims of unpunished crimes, these bodies of women bruised, set on fire, stabbed with knives, all these faces of missing children who smile on the photos, all the most scandalous mysteries of the country fit on paper. In the offices of the Central Office for the Suppression of Violence against Persons (OCRVP), in Nanterre, somewhat special cops and gendarmes read and reread the minutes of old procedures which coldly documented all these horrors. They analyze them, sort them, put them on computer files and/or in small colored folders, mix them in computers to try to extract a track or, better, a name. Removing the authors of these abominations from circulation is a little more than an ordinary investigator’s job, because these criminals (statistically, they are almost exclusively men) have passed through the drops. To imagine that they might be having a good time, years or decades after doing this, raising children, enjoying their retirement, or continuing to rape and kill, would put you in a soldier-monk mindset. of the criminal investigation. “Monk copyist”rectifies, laughing, Franck Dannerolle, 46, boss of OCRVP since 2022, watching one of his investigators wear his eyes on documents. “Here, that’s how you have to work first. » Afterwards, you will have to return to the field.

The service created in 2006, particularly around the legal theme of disappearances, has gradually gained in importance as the subject of “cold cases” has taken on importance and it aims to become the reference service. Now that the judicial center of Nanterre, a few streets away, is now installed with three investigating judges, who will eventually be five, for a number of reopened cases which will undoubtedly reach a hundred before the end of 2023, we would like well declare the commotion.

It is not won in advance, because the OCRVP, without being poor, does not have unlimited means either. About thirty investigators are divided into four groups, three of which are dedicated to cold cases since the last is dedicated exclusively to a distinct theme, investigations abroad – pour French victims of crimes abroad.