The Vénissieux affair illustrates the resurgence and the dangerousness of refusals to comply

The multiplication and dangerousness of refusals to comply, as well as the conditions for the use of weapons by the police, are at the heart of the drama which occurred on the night of Thursday August 18 to Friday August 19, in Vénissieux (Rhône) , south of the metropolis of Lyon. Hit by police fire, a 20-year-old man died, another 26-year-old was hospitalized. Its vital prognosis is “very committed”according to the prosecution.

The two men tried to force a police check in a stolen car by deliberately ramming a police officer, according to the first elements of a double investigation, set out in a press release from the Lyon prosecutor’s office. Which opened an investigation for “aggravated refusal to comply and violence with a weapon against law enforcement officers”entrusted to the Departmental Security, in order to specify the behavior of the two occupants of the vehicle.

The two police officers responsible for the shooting were taken into custody, as part of a separate investigation, entrusted to the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN), for “Violence with a weapon by the agent of public authority resulting in death without the intention of giving it”. Their police custody was lifted on Friday at the end of the day.

Read also: Refusal to comply, self-defense, hit and run: what does the law say?

“If the first elements seem to corroborate the hypothesis of self-defense, additional investigations – in particular a reconstruction and ballistics expertise – will however have to be carried out to confirm the exact circumstances in which the police officers used their weapons”, indicated the prosecution in a second press release, specifying that it was opening a judicial investigation in order to ensure investigations “in a contradictory way” and of “allow the families of the deceased and the seriously injured person to access the procedure”.

“Very unfavorably known to the police services”

The scene occurred shortly after midnight on Friday. As they were preparing to return from their night patrol, in a screen-printed service vehicle, four police officers from the specialized field brigade (BST) of the local police station noticed a car immobilized in the large parking lot of the center Carrefour de Vénissieux shopping mall, on the edge of the Lyon ring road. According to their account, they were puzzled by the position and the broken headlight of the vehicle, occupied by two individuals. Passing the registration of the Renault Megane in the files, the police understood that the car was stolen.

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