The police argue for their part that we have not heard Cedric Chouviat say on several occasions that he was being choked.
The family of Cedric Chouviat, died of an interpellation in January in Paris, was asked this Tuesday to the president and Emmanuel Macron, and the government to act resolutely against the police violence and called for re-suspension of officers accused in the case.
“We expect a solemn response of the president and Emmanuel Macron,” said Sofia Chouviat, his daughter, during a press conference, because “we still can’t understand why [the four police officers] have not been suspended, we do not understand why the technique of interpellation”, a key bottleneck, “has still not been prohibited.”
READ ALSO >> Death of Cedric Chouviat : “I choke,” repeated seven times, the driver to the police
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The Interior minister Christophe Castaner has announced that it will abandon future of this technique at the beginning of June, but it remains authorized until the definition of an alternative method. “Behind this key bottlenecks, there is a state of mind, a lack of well-being” of police officers, said Doria Chouviat, the wife of the victim.
“Cedric, it is too late, but this is a great opportunity for the government not to yield to the blackmail of trade unions and questioning” on the methods of questioning and the attitude of the police, she added during a speech of the family and their lawyers.
The police claim not to have heard, “I choke”
For their part, the four police officers implicated in the death of Cedric Chouviat say they “have not heard” the repeat “I choke” at the time of his arrest, said on Tuesday their lawyers. “Mr. Chouviat was trying to resist his arrest, and it is in the struggle that it has required its about, next to a traffic lane, the quays of the Seine, with the surrounding noise, and the sounds of the struggle : police officers have not heard”, he insisted.
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“When investigators of the IGPN were faced with this record”, on Wednesday in police custody, “the police were all surprised and catastrophés, because if they had heard these words, obviously they would have immediately stopped the fight,” continued the lawyer, describing the death of Cedric Chouviat of the “terrible tragedy”.
To reconstruct the scene, the expert of the Institute of Criminal Research of the Gendarmerie Nationale has analyzed thirteen videos of the arrest, nine shot by the driver himself, three recorded by one of the four police officers present at the time of the facts, and the last by a motorist.
The exchange of “understandable” in the recording of police officers
If these about Cedric Chouviat are audible in the expertise of 21 April, it is because they have been “saved by the helmet-mic” of the driver, according to Me of Montbrial. ‘He had the mic close to the mouth”, he says. The expertise, revealed on Monday by The World and Mediapart, “supports the hypothesis” the use of a headset by Cedric Chouviat without being able to “certification”.
READ ALSO >> Death of a driver after an interpellation : the tackle ventral, a practice criticized
On LCI, on Tuesday morning, the lawyer for the two other police officers, to Me, Laurent-Franck Liénard, has also assured that its “customers have discovered at the time of their custody of these videos, ( … ). They have discovered the words I choke.” “They have ever heard”, he assured. According to the expertise, “almost all” of the exchange between Cedric Chouviat and the police is “understandable” in the three videos filmed by one of the latter.
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violence and police brutality contrary to the French law
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A judicial investigation is opened for “manslaughter” after the death on 5 January of this driver of 42 years, two days after a traffic control stretched to the edge of the Eiffel tower. The four police officers are summoned at the beginning of July by the investigating magistrate.
