Home » News » INTERVIEW. “But where did I fall?” »: He tells about his two years undercover in the police

INTERVIEW. “But where did I fall?” »: He tells about his two years undercover in the police

For two years, the journalist Valentin Gendrot infiltrated the police, as a security assistant to experience the working conditions of the police as closely as possible.

He wrote a book about it which revealed insufficient training of policemen, omnipresent violence, blunders, racist and homophobic insults, and the ill-being of the police officers: 59 of them committed suicide in 2019.

Why did you want to infiltrate the police?

Police violence is on the rise, but the police themselves are overdue at work. It is this paradox that prompted me to take a closer look at the working conditions and write this book.

Policeman is an extremely difficult job, for which we must be psychologically armed, otherwise we go nuts. You have to imagine the anxiety-provoking daily life, with thefts, drug addicts, assaults … which must be managed with unsuitable equipment, cars that break down during patrols, permanent violence …

Your first day at the police station was eventful. What happened ?

I asked myself, “Where did I fall?” From day one, I saw a man in police custody beaten by a police officer. And a 70-year-old lady came to place a handrail against her husband who threatened her with death, to hear herself answer: “Come back if he does it again.” Immediately appeared the ordinary violence that goes under the radar, and the unpreparedness of the police as to the treatment of cases of domestic violence.

The police officers you describe are violent, racist, homophobic… Are they all like that?

The majority is not, we should not generalize. In the brigade where I worked, out of thirty-two policemen, five or six were. But it is the behavior of this minority which discredits the entire profession, and which makes it suffer. Violent people must be punished, and this is too rarely the case.

How has your book been received in the police community?

I only received one message from a former colleague. Otherwise: radio silence. The police unions agree with me in deploring the poor working conditions, but accuse me of exaggerating the violent police. Except that I’m a journalist, I tell a reality, I report facts that the infiltration allowed me to observe, and that’s it.

You say you witnessed a blunder (1). What do you think of the investigation opened by l’IGPN to verify the veracity of the facts that you present?

That’s excellent news. We must shed light on this matter. I will come back to my statements from last year. I covered the burr, because at the time it wouldn’t have changed anything. In the police, “we do not balance”, that is not done. I would have risked being isolated, intimidated… and not sure that it made any difference to the case.

Talking today has more echoes. The truth is going to be able to be restored for this teenager who was hit in the back of the car. Now that this has been made public, the tongues will loosen. And other police officers will also be able to say “no”, so that this kind of story does not happen again.

Cop, a journalist infiltrated the police, by Valentin Gendrot, published by Gouttes d’Or, 296 pages. € 18.

(1) A police officer severely beat and insulted a teenager who allegedly provoked him after a check.

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