“20 years since we put in place the whole repressive, the most monstrous failure”, estimates Marc La Mola, former of the Bac Nord
Marc La Mola is a former Bac Nord police officer in Marseille. Now converted into writing and author of several essays and documents, he has just published North of the city, at Michalon. In this book, he dissects and dissects the public police policies that led to the Marseille bac Nord scandal.
In 2012, when the Bac Nord affair broke out, how did you react?
I was no longer at the Bac, but I was still at the BSU north of Marseille, as a judicial police officer (OPJ). So, I saw the Bac police returning with their arrests and I saw the slow fall of the unit. We see the decline in the quality of the arrested and the interventions, of the cases made to make the figure.
It’s very simple, you have to make a business quota, if you don’t, you pick up anything. So, despite everything, they were effective, because there was so much business in the northern sector that they had no difficulty in doing so. But we very quickly see the level of business going down, and the colleagues who are turning into accountants.
In your book, you are very critical of politicians and particularly Nicolas Sarkozy, whom you nevertheless viewed favorably on his arrival. Why ?
At the beginning, like many, I let myself be a little fooled by the character who, on the police level, announces things which seemed, in the way in which it was stated, rather positive. We added that he was going to tackle police issues head-on. Nevertheless, very quickly, we saw what it gave. In particular, from the Toulouse speech where he said: “football games in the neighborhoods, it’s over”. So, end of community policing, end of prevention. But if a police does not have proximity, it is ineffective. Beyond tightening ladles, it is a real prevention and intelligence tool.
Little by little, we have seen changes, the merit bonus, the culture of results, management… The commissioner goes from real cop to manager, a statistician with his Excel spreadsheet. And there, we are witnessing this decadence of the police. I am very critical of politics, but in the police everything is political.
Shortly after the Bac Nord affair, am I soon after the Neyret affair, didn’t that reflect a real problem in the police?
The Neyret affair is something else again, another level. The North Bac, these are ethical sprains and small criminal offenses. Neyret a bit all mixed up. An excellent cop, but he’s lost his footing. The police were put in difficulty in relation to these two cases. That of the Bac Nord put in all the difficulties the Bacs, but also the Marseille police. There will always be a trace. Even among neighborhood kids who were 10 years old at the time and are 20 years old today, they will say to you: “the Bac, they are corrupt”.
There is, in Marseille, this new strategy of shelling, what do you think?
A cast on a wooden leg. If we don’t do anything else, we’ll do this. A certain category of the population is made to believe that the police are present. We’re going to pound. So occasionally, yes. But we must not delude ourselves, the difficulty of the networks is not done by questioning, but by investigation.
This is where I come back to the Bac Nord. Colleagues replaced the narcotics brigade. There were crews who would have practically only that, without having neither the skills, nor the networks, nor the training; and they did a little anything, got perverted. It was given what we know.
The shelling, it will please the press, there will be beautiful articles: “descent to the Casté, seized of 3 kilos, and two calibers”. Everybody is happy. But finally, when you challenge a dealer, an hour later he is replaced.
Would you be in favor of legalization/decriminalization?
I asked myself the question at one time. I said to myself “at the stage where we are, isn’t this the only solution? “. Then, you have to be completely honest, it’s no worse to have a joint in the evening than 10 pastis at noon. But in fact no. It would legalize an additional drug, along with tobacco or alcohol.
If we go back to the strictly police level, they will find something else: harder cannabis, chemical drugs, more cocaine. It’s been more than 20 years since we set up the all-repressive, it’s the most monstrous failure we have ever known in terms of police.
In September, twelve of the eighteen defendants in the so-called Bac Nord case will be tried on appeal – the prosecution, therefore the ministry, appealed against acquittals or sentences deemed too low – what do you expect from this trial? ?
I would like justice to be able to say, shit, we messed up. In particular Dallest, the prosecutor, at the time, who dropped the word “gangrene”.
At the time, there was no AFD (fixed criminal fine), today the conso is a fine, but before, it was a provision to the OPJ. Any clampin caught doing numbers with a booger, as they said, I auditioned. He didn’t give a damn about it as much as I did, but it occupied a crew, a secretary. I called the prosecutor’s office, I was told “reminder to the law”. I didn’t even do it to him and to be perfectly honest and if he was nice, I gave him back the goods and I said to him: “go, break it off”.
In short, so when I was doing the hearing, I called the prosecution, and I asked, and the matter, what do I do with it? The prosecution said “destroy”? So I opened my drawer, I put it in, and stuff like that, I did 5, 8-10 a day, so that after two months, I had two hundred grams. This is what happened for the North Bac. We take shit and we put it in the pocket.
The one I call Luc, he grabs shitty costume jewelry that he picks up off some guy, charms. He puts them in the jacket of his fatigues which hangs in the locker room. He went to jail for it. I swear it’s true. Go explain it now…
So I hope their honor will be washed a little. In this case, there are two who really messed up: one admitted having taken a (dealer’s) bag and another the same, there you go, those ones, there’s no need to even defend it, they screwed up , indicate. The others went to prison for three jewels in a jacket, four hidden barrettes, that’s what.
When there is the temptation without the structure of the hierarchy, which is obsessed with its figures, well here we come to the affair of the Bac Nord.
More recently, there are also debates on police violence, that of the Bacs in demonstrations, the question of defensive shootings… Jean-Luc Mélenchon even calls for the dissolution of the Bacs
My position is clear. I demand a moratorium on Bins. Does the baccalaureate that we have known have a reason to exist today? No. With the evolution of technologies, cameras, surveillance, telephony and beacons, is there as much flagrant crime that was offered to the Bac twenty years ago as today? No. Afterwards, I don’t agree with Mélenchon, whom I find dangerous.
But I think that at the very least, you have to think. Shouldn’t we better dress some of these agents or put them under investigation? When I entered the Bac, there was a recurring offense that we encountered almost every night, it was roulette theft: we break a car to take the car radio. Today, these are offenses that are hardly ever committed. Now, what do the Bacs do? AFD? Maintaining order? These are not their duties.