The announcement of the ouster of Eric Arella, whose troops had freshly welcomed the director general the day before, was followed by spontaneous gatherings of police officers throughout France. The challenge of a vast reform plan has been hardened again.
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He left his office decorated with posters from the Bishopric Prize, a thriller festival that he patronized, then greeted the police gathered for a starting pot. He did not have time to organize his: Friday, September 7, Eric Arella, 62, boss of the PJ in the south of France since 2015, was asked to make his boxes without delay. “Fired as a malpropre,” sums up one of his men. His departure, under the cheers will probably not be enough to appease bitterness: four decades of service in the police, swept by a video lasting 68 seconds.
On the images, shot Thursday in Marseille and become viral, 200 police officers posted in the corridors of the PJ’s headquarters offer a “hedge of dishonor” to Frédéric Veaux, the director general of the National Police (DGPN), who came Defend his reform of the highly contested judicial police. “I prefer to warn you, there is a reception committee,” took care to warn Mr. Arella, who knows Mr. Veaux well for having served under his orders at the PJ in Corsica and the Stups de Marseille. “I have never been afraid of thugs, I’m not going to be afraid of the police,” said Mr. Veaux in substance. The video of his wandering in the midst of frozen officials like statues, crossed arms, clothed in their vests with “judicial police” barred in a black line in mourning, has resulted in other effects than fear: a feeling of ‘Outrage, which is more worn in the public square.
“disloyalty”
Less than twenty-four hours after the facts, Eric Arella learned that he was removed from his duties, considered responsible for “disloyalty” which was “not acceptable,” said the general management of the National Police by justifying this sudden dismissal by the ultima ratio of statistics, of “bad” PJ results in Marseille with “record homicide levels while the workforce has been considerably strengthened”.
The spark was enough for the fire that has been running for months in the judicial police to turn into a blaze of anger. The ouster of Eric Arella? “The dangerous choice to eliminate (…) a scapegoat”, “an unjust and brutal decision”, according to two commissioners’ unions. “PJ investigators are mad and organize their leaders now!” Add the National Association of the Judicial Police. From Bayonne to Nantes, from Grenoble to Pointe-à-Pitre, Lilles or Versailles, hundreds of police officers spontaneously gathered in front of their police stations on Friday afternoon. “A huge mess when a little consultation could have flatten the difficulties,” laments a senior police officer.
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