The Minister of the Interior remained firm.
On the calendar first, he rejected the Senate's proposal to introduce a moratorium until the end of the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games and confirmed its implementation at the end of 2023.
“We have been in a moratorium for thirty years. The objective is to be ready for the Olympics”, we justified at Place Beauvau.
Mr. Darmanin has also not given up on the establishment of a departmental director of the national police (DDPN), despite criticism of this level deemed "unsuitable" by both PJ investigators and magistrates. and parliamentarians.
His initial project planned to place all the services of a department - intelligence, public security, border police (PAF) and PJ - under the authority of a single DDPN, dependent on the prefect.
Rather than renouncing this level, the minister has created interdepartmental directors of the national police (DIPN) who will have authority over the PJ and the PAF of several departments.
The creation of these DIPNs, justified Beauvau, is a response "to the fears" expressed in the PJ and the PAF which will thus retain "the fullness of their current powers".
"Very Confused"
The DDPNs will thus keep public security and intelligence under their control.
But in some departments (Finistère, Dordogne...), they will also have authority over the PJ.
This adjustment, in a reform supposed to simplify the organization of the police by putting an end to "silos" (organization according to sectors, editor's note), has not aroused much enthusiasm.
"All of this is very confusing", reacted to AFP a commissioner of PJ, "it will be very complicated to explain to the agents and it may still cause a lot of misunderstanding".
The president of the National Association of the Judicial Police (ANPJ) Yann Bauzin told AFP of his "disgust".
Rally of police officers in front of the main police station in Strasbourg, on October 17, 2022, against the project to reform the judicial police © Frederick FLORIN / AFP/Archives
"The project hasn't changed at all," he said.
"In June, we were already talking about interdepartmental police services (SIDPN). The DIPN is just a change of acronym but it's a joke (...) It's inconsistent from start to finish".
“You are announcing a reform to simplify the structures and in the end you end up with something even more complex”, an annoyed AFP investigator from the PJ, for whom “nothing is resolved as long as you have the prefect who has authority over the PJ".
And to predict "unprecedented administrative chaos before big deadlines (JO-2024)".
Features
Grégory Joron, from the SGP police unit union, noted an "opening" since Mr. Darmanin took into account their "two red lines by opening a supra-departmental level and guaranteeing a budget specific to the PJ".
"But we remain worried about the state of the investigation sector as a whole, with many colleagues who are suffering," he told AFP.
The aim of the reform was to reduce the staggering stock of unsolved cases in the public security investigation services.
For the Alliance union, Fabien Vanhemelryck was pleased that "the specificities and skills of the PJ" have been "preserved".
As for Thierry Clair (Unsa), he welcomed the fact that the PJ "will keep its budget".
"It's important for its operation," he told AFP.
The secretary general of the Alliance police union Fabien Vanhemelryck at the town hall of Grenoble, March 9, 2021 © Philippe DESMAZES / AFP / Archives
A map on the articulation of DIPNs and DDPNs was released on Friday.
With surprising particularities, in the Nord and Pas-de-Calais, electoral land of Gérald Darmanin, but also in the Marseille area.
The DIPNs of Lille and Arras thus have jurisdiction over PJ in both departments.
"We have taken into account the specificity of this pool of crime", we explained to the ministry.
The DIPN of Marseille, where the Pjistes have shown themselves to be very hostile to the reform, will manage the PJ of the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence and the Hautes-Alpes, but not that of the bordering departments of Var and Vaucluse.
© 2023 AFP