Complaint by police officers “against the State”: the difficult proof of endangering others

Lawyers welcomed with great caution the announcement of a future complaint from the Alliance police union against the State for endangering the lives of others.

“It’s just political communication,” says, shrugging his shoulders, a senior magistrate, joined by Didier Rebut, professor of criminal law at Paris-2 Panthéon Sorbonne: “For there to be endangerment of the lives of others, there must be a manifest violation of a particular obligation of prudence and safety. In other words, the dangerous situation is not enough to characterize this offense. In this case, it will be necessary to prove that the order given (to the agents) is itself a violation of a law or regulatory text. It is an offense that requires extreme rigor,” recalls the academic. It will therefore be necessary to see which texts governing the maintenance of order will be targeted and how the chain of command may have violated them.

According to article 223-1 of the penal code, “