Municipal police officers were suspended from their training course a month after the publication of a video in which one of these trainees can be seen dancing on the terrace of a restaurant in Poitiers, her face grimaced in black.
According to the restaurateur, some participants in the evening were part of “a promotion of the municipal police” in training at the National Center for the Territorial Public Service (CNFPT) in Poitiers. “They all said, ‘you can’t say it was us,'” Michaël Taylor said Thursday on RMC info.
–
Questioned by an AFP correspondent, the management of the establishment condemned the attitude of the trainees and therefore indicated that they had temporarily suspended their training.
A letter was also sent to the communities that employ them during their internship to inform them of these actions. “It is then up to the communities to establish these civil servants or not,” said Didier Mercier-Lachapelle, director of the New Aquitaine delegation of the CNFPT on the radio. Poitou Blue Franceadding for his part, that there would be no other sanction.
The restaurateur lost “80% of its turnover”
This video of a few seconds filmed by a passerby during a costume party for a bachelorette party on May 18 and then posted on social networks shows a white woman wearing an Afro wig, her face made up in black, dancing stereotypically on the restaurant terrace.
Since its publication, restaurateur Michaël Taylor claims to have suffered on social networks a wave of accusations of racism and promotion of “blackface” – a practice which consists in blackening the face in order to make fun of black people. He says he lost “80% of his turnover” and received insults and death threats.
This week, SOS racism supported him, his local manager Cheikh Diaby, assuring him that he was “a collateral victim”. It was the person doing the ‘blackface’ who caused trouble,” Cheikh Diaby told an AFP correspondent on Thursday. The “blackface” is a “practice constituting a racist crime” “born in the United States during the slavery period”, which many restaurateurs are unaware of, according to Cheikh Diaby.
The restaurateur who works with his mother said he filed a complaint for death threats, defamation and cyberbullying.
–
