Citizens mobilized Thursday evening, during the municipal councils of Saint-Gilles and Anderlecht to carry arrests questioning the relationship of the police with young people.
In Saint-Gilles, the bourgmestre Charles Picqué said he was concerned about a good relationship between the population and the police, and said he hoped that police abuses would be penalized with intransigence. He encouraged the victims to file a complaint, but argued that the dialogue should take into account the complexity of the problem and not indiscriminately reject all police work.
Specific training
The bourgmestre argued that the identity check receipts, bodycams on the police and specific training requested by citizens are included in the majority agreement and that their implementation was delayed by the appointment of the chief of body. He highlighted prevention work with young people and the existing outreach program (“UNEUS“) and specified that a budget of 75,000 euros was intended to have these safety devices evaluated in 2020 by a criminology center or a university.
“Abuses, not smudges”
A representative of “collective of Madres“, a collective of mothers from the commune, Latifa Elmcabeni, deplored these delays, noting that this was her 4th arrest since March 4, 2018. She insisted that police abuse should not be considered as marginal blunders. The majority of young people do not file complaints, she said.
A difficult intervention
In Anderlecht, a recent video broadcast by the SLFP union, of a difficult police intervention in which a police officer had been hit, was discussed by the citizens who came to debate. One of them estimated that there could also be seen violence by the police.
“We were receiving more and more complaints from traders on the Anderlecht Gate side who were complaining of an increasing number of thefts, so I instructed the police to try to identify the perpetrators“, said the bourgmestre Fabrice Cumps,”I see in the images an extraordinary self-control on the part of the police force“he added.
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