The two police officers were taken into custody as part of the investigation into intentional homicide by a person holding public authority entrusted to the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN), according to a source familiar with the matter. , confirmed by a judicial source. In the case of shootings by police officers, the IGPN is systematically seized.

A second investigation for attempted murder of a person holding public authority, conducted by the judicial police, concerns the conditions of the refusal to comply.

According to two police sources, around 7:00 p.m., police wanted to check a car with three men on board.

The vehicle started and then hit another car, according to one of these sources.

“Two police officers fired their service weapons at the vehicle which was heading in their direction as they approached it,” a judicial source told AFP.

“One of the three shots hit the driver who died,” added this source. On a video visible on TikTok, we see the police performing cardiac massage on the injured man, lying on the roadway next to the vehicle.

The other occupants fled, according to one of the police sources.

At the scene, in a back alley of the Cours de Vincennes, a tarp was temporarily installed to conceal the scene, according to an AFP journalist. The driver’s red car was across this lane.

Part of the neighborhood, where businesses were still open at the time, was cordoned off by the police.

The body of the driver was evacuated shortly before 11:00 p.m., AFP noted.

A neighborhood trader, Omar Labdi, 52, testified to AFP that he “saw three police officers running behind the car” asking him to stop. It “drove slowly, there were two of them, the driver’s friend ran down and he continued to drive slowly and the police fired three times”, he said.

Since the beginning of the year, twelve people have died after police fire in the context of refusing to comply.

In a few hours, in September, two people died and a third was injured by police fire: in Rennes on the night of September 6 to 7, a woman was killed and a man injured during an interception during a drug operation. Then a man, driving a stolen car, lost his life in Nice around 4:30 p.m.

In August, two men lost their lives in Vénissieux and another in Neuville-en-Ferrain (Nord). A motorist was killed in March in Sevran (Seine-Saint-Denis) and an Egyptian migrant in June in Sospel (Alpes-Maritimes). An 18-year-old passenger was killed in Grenoble in exchanges of gunfire on the night of October 4 to 5 during a chase.

In Paris, a driver and his passenger on the Pont-Neuf died in Paris in April, the evening of the re-election of Emmanuel Macron. Then, in June, a passenger after a chase in the 18th arrondissement.

– New law –

The multiplication of deaths since the beginning of the year after police fire when they refuse to comply raises the question of the use of their weapon by the police.

By way of comparison, two people were killed in similar circumstances in 2021, in Marseille and Bayonne, according to the IGPN report.

A law of February 2017 modified the conditions for opening fire by the police. Until then, they were subject to the Penal Code and the principles of self-defence, like any citizen.

Article 435-1 of the internal security code (CSI) now stipulates that they can shoot if they refuse to comply if they cannot stop the car other than by the use of arms and if, in their escape, the driver is “likely to perpetrate (…) attacks on their life or their physical integrity or those of others”.

It is this doctrine that is applied by the gendarmes, long before it is applied by the police.

The principles of “absolute necessity” and “strict proportionality”, linked to self-defence, remain in force.