Four months of suspended prison sentence were required Thursday evening, in Bobigny, against a police officer, betrayed by the video of a resident, who had uttered racist insults during the arrest of an Egyptian in April 2020.
Decision January 6, 2022
“A police officer has a duty to set an example,” argued prosecutor Loïc Pageot, who also demanded a fine of 1,000 euros.
“Bicot has a particular connotation even sixty years after the fact. When you fish someone out, these words keep all their meaning”, underlined Mr. Pageot, referring to the massacre of Algerian demonstrators on October 17, 1961 in Paris. The bodies of several dozen victims were thrown into the Seine
Against the six other police officers prosecuted for violence at the direct summons of the civil party, the public prosecutor did not request a conviction, for lack of formal proof. “Nobody saw what happened,” he said.
At the end of a fifteen-hour hearing, the decision was reserved for January 6, 2022.
Ha! ha! It’s flowing, you should have hung a ball on her foot
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On April 26, 2020 at around 1:30 a.m., police officers arrested on Île-Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis) an Egyptian national suspected of theft of equipment on a construction site and who had tried, according to police sources, to take flight by throwing oneself into the Seine. On the facts of theft, the case was dismissed. After taking the young man out of the river, one of the police officers said: “A bicot like that does not swim”, according to a video captured by a local resident and posted by journalist Taha Bouhafs on social networks. “Ha! Ha! It’s leaking, you should have hung a ball on its foot”, we could also hear.
Once on the bank, “they all hit me”,
“I was going to die,” explained Samir Elgendy at the helm, assisted by an interpreter. The latter explained that he got out of the water “alone”. Once on the bank, “they all hit me,” hammered the young man. The violence continued “in the van” and “all the way to the police station,” said the 29-year-old worker, who was “afraid” to file a complaint because he was in an irregular situation.
“Schoolboy joke”
It is “a joke of bad taste”, defended the official who used the term “bicot”. “I needed to decompress and make the gallery laugh,” said the 26-year-old policeman, from the night staff of the Territorial Directorate of Public Security in Hauts-de-Seine.
“I regret this joke,” continued the slender official wearing a sober blue suit.
At the material time, he considered that “bicot” “was not an insult but a familiar word like” rebeu “, adding that he had since” banned “this word from his vocabulary. also referred to “a schoolboy joke for fun.” Another pleaded “a moment of humor”, “we are humans after all.” “A police officer above all!”, retorted the prosecutor.
Four anti-racist associations (Licra, MRAP, LDH, SOS Racisme) have become civil parties in this case.
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