The police officer indicted in the investigation into the éborgnement in January 2019 of Jérôme Rodrigues, one of the figures of the “yellow vests”, was sanctioned at the beginning of March with a firm exclusion of five days.
The official, a member of a security and intervention company (CSI) of the police headquarters (PP), is suspected of having thrown a hand grenade (GMD), the splinter of which caused the loss of the right eye of the Yellow Vest during the demonstration on January 26, 2019 in Paris.
On March 3, he was given a temporary exclusion from office for 15 days, ten of which were suspended, according to his lawyer Me Sébastien Journé. The penalty relates to improper use of the grenade, according to a source familiar with the matter.
A temporary exclusion
The disciplinary council of April 2021 had not formulated a sanction proposal, according to Me Journé, who announced his intention to seize the administrative court to contest this decision. Me Journé claimed to have “identified” since “on certain videos extremely convincing elements showing that there were two manifestations of hostility”, including a projectile, against the group of police officers in which his client was, justifying, according to him, a grenade shot. “These elements were transmitted on March 3 to the investigating judge. We have therefore appealed graciously to the Ministry of the Interior to have this sanction canceled, ”he said.
The temporary exclusion, finally decided by Beauvau, is a sanction known as the second group within the civil service. During the period of exclusion, the civil servant is excluded from the service and does not receive any remuneration. The mention of the sanction disappears from the administrative file of the agent after ten years, if no new fault has been committed in the meantime.
The policeman had been indicted in January 2021 for “willful violence resulting in mutilation or permanent disability”, a criminal qualification punishable by assizes.