The rise of police fines in France causes public discontent
2022.12.06 10:09
The rise of police fines in France causes public discontent
Budrigannews.com – One April afternoon in 2020, Mohamed Assam went to a supermarket near his home near Paris to buy groceries. He claimed that he had never spoken to a police officer and had already paid more than 900 euros in fines for nine different infractions when he returned.
The 27-year-old from Epinay-sous-Senart, a suburb of Paris, said he found out about the fines about a week later when he got notifications in the mail. According to the notices he received from an interior ministry agency reviewed by Reuters, his alleged offenses include violating COVID-19 lockdown rules and lacking proper headlights on his quad bike. He is contesting these charges.
Assam stated, “It was a surprise, a bad surprise.” According to Assam and his attorney, he owes thousands of euros in total for fines imposed since 2019, including late payment fees.
Despite opposition claims that he is soft on drug dealers and other criminals, French President Emmanuel Macron has implemented a number of policies to reduce urban crime. These include the police’s use of their increased authority to impose fines.
According to the fines agency of the interior ministry, the number of non-traffic-related fines has increased by more than six times nationwide, from 240,000 in 2018 to 1.54 million in 2018. The number surpassed 2 million in 2020, when the country went through multiple COVID-19 lockdowns.
By preventing minor infractions from going to court, supporters contend that the fines lessen the strain on the legal system. The penalties, according to critics, permit police to impose punishments at their own discretion and without proper accountability. Some lawyers and rights advocates contend that this authority has led the police to target poorer individuals and those from ethnic minority backgrounds, resulting in substantial debt for some.
Although the census does collect some figures on immigrants based on place of birth and nationality, French laws strictly limit the collection of data about an individual’s race or ethnicity, making it difficult to determine exactly how the fines impact ethnic minority groups. According to a Reuters analysis of census-related and some fine-related police data from all over France, people have been fined more frequently in areas with the highest immigrant populations.
Alice Achache, a lawyer who represents some Paris residents who are challenging fines, stated, “There is systemic discrimination.”
In the past, President Macron stated that the French police do not practice “systemic racism.” The national police and his office declined to comment for this report. Questions were not responded to by the interior ministry. It has been alleged that police in other nations, including the United States and Britain, over-police and over-sanction minority communities.
In the town of Epinay-sous-Senart in Assam, a Reuters analysis of data from more than two years’ worth of police reports documenting incidents involving at least one fine revealed that more than 80 percent of those incidents took place in two adjacent neighborhoods where residents claim to live a large number of families from ethnic minority groups.
According to the local police data that Reuters obtained through a freedom of information request, 403 of the 478 police reports that recorded fines from April 2018 to July 2020 were from that area of the town. According to the data, most of the people who were fined had Arab or African surnames.
According to data from the 2017 census that was compiled by the government think tank France Strategie, more than half of the children in Epinay-sous-Senart and more than a third of the residents between the ages of 25 and 54 are from non-European immigrant backgrounds.
According to the review published by Reuters, the high concentration of fines in areas of the town where immigrants live is consistent with a pattern that has developed throughout France.
According to France Strategie’s figures, police issued 58 COVID-related fines per 1,000 people in the five Paris districts with the highest concentration of residents from non-European backgrounds. This is approximately 40% higher than the rate in other areas, where nearly 42 fines were issued for every 1,000 people.
Between mid-March and mid-May 2020, during the nation’s first nationwide lockdown, the rate of pandemic-related fines was 54% higher nationwide in areas with a high concentration of immigrants than in other areas.
According to recipients of fines and defense attorneys, police also occasionally issue fines remotely and fine the same people repeatedly, sometimes multiple times within minutes. These individuals assert that minorities bear the brunt of these sporadic and infrequent fines, bolstering their suspicions that the police are targeting ethnic groups.
According to a number of legal experts, it is against police procedures to issue fines remotely for non-traffic infractions. The Rennes public prosecutor, Philippe Astruc, is in charge of the office that settles national disputes over fines. He stated that, with the exception of certain road-related rule violations, the police should not issue a fine without first stopping the offender.
Even though there are rules, some lawyers who represent people who have been fined say that they are fined remotely. The Paris attorney, Achache, claimed that recipients sometimes do not even know they are being fined at the time of the alleged offense because police regularly conduct identity checks.
Some academics assert that it is challenging to demonstrate bias in fining practices. Different elements that could make sense of the topographical difference in fine rates, sociologists said, incorporate more prominent convergence of police watches or higher crime percentages in specific regions.
According to Aline Daillere, a sociologist at Paris Saclay University who studies policing, the Reuters analysis demonstrates that “certain categories of the population are very frequently fined,” primarily young men from poorer neighborhoods who are either minorities or are perceived as such.
She suggested that police are targeting minority populations as one possible explanation. She stated, however, that without data demonstrating that police treat people of various ethnicities differently, it is impossible to demonstrate discrimination. Such data are not available.
Augustin Dumas, who will serve as the municipal police chief of Epinay-sous-Senart until the summer of 2020, claimed that residents’ complaints prompted the police to respond. ” Dumas, who is now an elected official in a nearby town, said, “You need to act if someone is doing something wrong.”
In the face of fierce opposition from the right, Macron, who ran for office five years ago on a centrist platform and was re-elected this year, has strengthened his stance on law and order. Rights advocates contend that his government has eroded civil liberties while expanding authority, such as the power to shut down mosques without a trial.
The authority to levy fines right away is one of the expanded police powers. Since 2020, a number of new punishable offenses have been added, such as drug use and loitering in building hallways. As part of a larger security bill, the government wants to add more fines for police. This month, lawmakers will vote on the legislation.
In October, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told the upper house of parliament that the proposed increase in fines aimed to provide “efficiency and simplicity.” Darmanin denied that the police used racial profiling when issuing fines during a subsequent debate in the lower house in November.
In contrast to fines for minor infractions like making noise, littering, or violating lockdown restrictions, the new fines that the government is proposing would be recorded on a person’s criminal record and include penalties for offenses like graffiti and theft of gasoline. In either case, the absence of judicial oversight irks some critics.
The sociologist Daillere stated, “Justice is being taken out of the courtroom and conducted on the streets, without safeguards like the right to a defense.” What prevents a police officer from issuing a sanction even if there isn’t an infraction if we don’t appear before a judge?
Brought into the world in France to guardians from Morocco, Assam said police have generalized and “assumptions” about him and his companions of outsider beginning. According to him, the fact that the police frequently stop them makes him feel less than equal to his fellow citizens. At the beginning of this year, Assam spoke over coffee in a neighborhood cafe, “We are French, we are proud to be French. We are regular people like everyone else.”
With a population of just over 12,000 people, Epinay-sous-Senart is located approximately 30 kilometers southeast of central Paris. A 1960s-built area to the east of the town’s historic district is where some migrants from France’s former African colonies settled.
Assam lives in “Les Cineastes,” a newer part of town with a bunch of modern apartment buildings and a cafe and a few shops. Over the more than two years that Reuters looked at, the majority of fines were issued by police in this and a nearby neighborhood.
According to data provided by the interior ministry for the year 2021, the rate of both violent and non-violent crime in Epinay-sous-Senart is lower than the average for other towns in the same department and the greater Paris region.
According to Reuters, the goal of Dumas, who was made municipal police chief in 2017 by the center-right mayor of the town, was to combat drug dealing and antisocial behavior.
Reuters found that some people received multiple fines. Reuters looked at 478 police reports and found that 185 people were involved. According to the information obtained by Reuters from the police, approximately one fifth of the recipients were fined in three or more instances. Reuters also looked at what was in the police reports, and it turned out that some people got multiple fines for the same thing. According to the reports, numerous fines were also imposed as a result of local decrees allowing police to stop individuals in particular locations and prohibiting outdoor gatherings.
According to the town’s fine data, Hassan Bouchouf was fined more than two dozen times. Even after they had moved to the nearby woods, the 37-year-old factory worker told Reuters that whenever the police saw him and his friends socializing outside, they would either tell him to move on or fine him.
“Who am I upsetting?” he said. ” Are the squirrels awakened?”
According to a treasury summary dated August 9, Bouchouf owes more than 20,000 euros for fines received between 2017 and 2020.
Dumas did not apologise for the numerous fines he imposed. He said individuals who were fined over and again had committed rehashed infractions.
Assam and Bouchouf’s fines were not discussed when questioned by the Essonne police department.
According to the mayor, two police officers, and more than a dozen residents who were interviewed by Reuters, Epinay-sous-Senart’s police have been less active in issuing fines since the arrival of a new mayor and police chief in the summer of 2020. In Epinay-sous-Senart, the mayor’s office did not respond to requests for data for this time period.
The center-left mayor of the town, Damien Allouch, who will be elected in June 2020, told Reuters that although antisocial behavior can be addressed in other ways, police continue to impose fines when necessary. He stated, “Discussion is sometimes sufficient.”
When Reuters inquired about the previous police data that the municipality provided, Allouch did not respond.
Georges Pujals, who appointed Dumas and served as mayor until 2020, denied that police had discriminated. He stated that during the lockdown, police were following government-imposed COVID regulations and that a select group of individuals who had received multiple fines were well-known to the authorities. He went on to say that the public prosecutor oversees the work that municipal police officers do to enforce the law.
Assam’s fines prompted a considerably more profound knot with the police.
According to both men and a witness, Assam verbally confronted Dumas on the street later that same month after learning of the fines for April 2020. According to Dumas, Assam harmed him; According to Assam, he only insulted Dumas. The two men let Reuters know there was no actual savagery. According to Assam, Assam was detained by police at his residence the following morning.
According to a court document, the Court of Evry found Assam guilty of violence and threats against an official in November 2020. According to Assam’s attorney, Clara Gandin, the appeal for his six-month suspended sentence is scheduled to be heard in December. Gandin stated that young people in the neighborhood were harassed by police, and she plans to argue that this provocation warrants a lighter sentence.
Separately, Gandin stated, Assam has contested the nine fines he received for his trip to the supermarket, in addition to the four fines he received in April and May 2020, on a variety of grounds, including the fact that he was not always stopped by officers and that police reports did not provide sufficient information. According to Gandin, a police tribunal canceled two of the fines, both of which were related to COVID-19. He continues to challenge the remaining eleven fines, several of which are related to the quad bike he drove to the supermarket.
According to the recipients and their attorneys, Reuters discovered at least 45 individuals in Epinay-sous-Senart and other parts of the greater Paris region who claim they were fined without having any contact with a police officer. According to the treasury summaries and fine notices shared with Reuters or the lawyers, the fines were handed out between 2017 and 2021 for antisocial behavior like making noise and breaking the lockdown. Based on their names, almost all of the people were immigrants or immigrants’ descendants.
According to him and a person close to the local public prosecutor’s office, Assam complained about remote fines during a police interview following his arrest in April 2020. That led to a review by the prosecutor’s office, which determined that Assam had received remote fines from the police, the person claimed.
As for Assam’s case, the local public prosecutor’s office said it couldn’t say anything. However, it informed Reuters that the local prosecutor sent a letter to mayors to remind police of the rules after reviewing a complaint from 2020 regarding remote fines. Reuters read the letter and found that “fines can only be issued after direct contact with the person” in relation to the lockdown.
Assam’s attorney Gandin told Reuters that the fines are “not legal because they cannot be issued without physical contact” and that “this confirms that the prosecutor is perfectly aware that there has been remote fining.”
The criticism of police fines comes in the context of broader allegations of police discrimination. Identity checks by the police have been a flashpoint.
In a significant decision, the Paris Court of Appeal in 2021 found that police identity checks at a Paris train station in 2017 on three high school students — French nationals of Moroccan, Mali, and Comorian ancestry — were based on discrimination. The court stated at the time that each person received 1,500 euros in compensation in addition to legal fees.
Assam and more than 30 other Epinay-sous-Senart residents complained to the Defenseur des Droits, the French state’s rights watchdog, about the town police’s handling of pandemic-related fines last year.
The April 2021 submission, which was prepared by Gandin and other lawyers, stated that remote fining is “systemic discrimination” by police against young men of North African or Subsaharan African origin. It says that the police engaged in “police harassment,” which it calls “remote and repetitive fining.”
Since then, complaints about police fines have increased. Similar allegations were made in a joint complaint that was submitted in March to the Defenseur des Droits by approximately sixty people living in three different Paris neighborhoods. According to a person familiar with the situation, the watchdog is looking into approximately ten complaints that are claiming improper police fines.
The majority of the complaints are from Paris. According to a spokesperson for the watchdog, the organization has the authority to make policy recommendations and assist in challenging violations of rights, but it does not have the authority to overturn administrative or court decisions.
The Defenseur des Droits’s head, Claire Hedon, declined to discuss the investigations. However, she stated that the issue with fines is that they can be imposed arbitrarily and are challenging. Being able to appeal is a fundamental justice principle, she stated.
Lawyers assert that debts incurred as a result of fines may continue to be a significant burden on individuals.
In early November, Assam stated that he had found employment in sales after a period of unemployment. He claimed that he continued to receive notices from the authorities threatening to send bailiffs or take money owed from his bank account, as well as letters about his court proceedings. He claimed that the warnings stress him out.
