While the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, plans to present his orientation and programming law for the Ministry of the Interior (Lopmi) to the “October return”the “annual performance report”, carried out by the Ministry of the Economy, Finance, Economic and Industrial Sovereignty, reveals a contrasting situation between the objectives displayed by the police administration for 2021 and their rate of achievement.
First lesson, as Mr. Darmanin hammers home his intention to double the number of staff in the field by 2030, the “engagement rate” of police officers, that is to say their presence on the public highway, remains stable compared to previous years (36.85%) but well below the expected 41%. However, observes the report, “the obligation for the police to draft a large volume of procedural documents” would weigh on activity outside the premises. Also, according to Bercy, “to give the police the means to be more present on the ground, it is important to reduce the time devoted to procedural acts, and therefore to lighten criminal proceedings marked by great complexity and significant heaviness, to the point lead to a loss of attractiveness of the investigation sector”.
Far from being new, this observation had already raised questions from the President of the Republic in Marseille, on September 14, 2021: “Who can still understand (…) the multiplication of formalisms and sometimes repetitions? », then questioned Emmanuel Macron, referring to a simplification of criminal procedure that the state of Community law and case law, in particular, however, makes illusory. To respond more surely to this challenge, the creation of a body of“survey assistants” has been enacted but questions remain about the training and status of these “police clerks”. The only certainty at this stage is that they should be recruited from among the administrative, technical and scientific personnel of the police, on a voluntary basis, to relieve the work of the judicial police officers by carrying out small procedural acts, such as requisitions addressed to telephone operators or notices to lawyers.
“Demotivating” peripheral missions
Will such measures contribute to a “refocusing on the core business” police officers ? This problem, related to “undue tasks”is regularly raised by police unions, who denounce the growing share of missions “entering the extended sphere of security” according to the report, without however falling “priority missions of the national police”, like the static guards of buildings. However, this type of peripheral missions, “expensive and demotivating”remains at a still high level, of the order of 8% of all those entrusted to the police, diverted “of their true operational missions”.
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