Intervention deadlines, online pre-plaint: Bercy draws up a mixed assessment of objectives displayed by police

In a report devoted to the programs implemented by Place Beauvau in 2021, the Ministry of the Economy notes some successes, but underlines pitfalls.

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While the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, plans to present his orientation and programming law of the Ministry of the Interior (LOPMI) at the “Back to school”, the “annual performance report “, Directed by the Ministry of the Economy, Finance, Economic and Industrial Sovereignty, reveals a contrasting situation between the objectives displayed by the police administration for 2021 and their production rate.

First lesson, while Mr. Darmanin hammers his intention to double the workforce in the field by 2030, the “engagement rate” of the police, that is to say their presence on the public highway , remains stable compared to previous years (36.85 %) but largely below the 41 % expected. However, observes the report, “the obligation for the police to write a large volume of procedural acts” would weigh on activity outside the premises. Also, according to Bercy, “to give the police the means to be more present in the field, it is important to reduce the time devoted to procedural acts, and therefore to lighten a criminal procedure marked by a high complexity and Important heaviness, to the point of leading to a loss of attractiveness of the investigation sector “.

Far from being new, this observation had already aroused the questions of the President of the Republic in Marseille, September 14, 2021: “who can still understand (…) the multiplication of formalisms and sometimes repetitions?”, So had Questioned Emmanuel Macron by evoking a simplification of criminal procedure that the rule of law and community case law, in particular, makes however illusory. To respond more surely to this challenge, the creation of an “investigation assistants” has been acted but questions remain on the training and the status of these “police clerks”. Only certainty at this stage, they should be recruited from the administrative, technical and scientific staff of the police, on the basis of volunteer, to relieve the work of judicial police officers by performing menus procedural acts, such as the requisitions addressed to telephony operators or advice to lawyers.

“demotivating” peripheral missions

Will such measures contribute to a “refocusing on the core business” of the police? This problem, linked to “undue tasks”, is regularly raised by the police unions, which denounce the growing part of missions “entering the extended sphere of security” according to the report, without raising the “priority missions of the national police “, like the static buildings of buildings. However, this type of peripheral missions, “expensive and demotivating”, remains at a still high level, of the order of 8 % of the whole of those who are entrusted to the police, diverted “from their real operational missions”.

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/Media reports.