three police officers tried for manslaughter
Three police officers are on trial from Monday before the Paris Criminal Court concerning the death of a 33-year-old man during his arrest in March 2015. The technique of the choke key had been called into question.
More than seven years after the death of Amadou Koumé, a 33-year-old man, during his arrest with a choke key in Paris, three police officers are on trial from Monday for manslaughter.
Civil servants aged 45, 47 and 62, then peacekeeper, brigadier and major, must be compared before the Paris Criminal Court for three half-days, to explain themselves on this night from March 5 to 6, 2015.
Pendant Maintained 6 minutes
That evening, according to the elements of the investigation, a call reported to the police the agitated behavior of a man manifesting as a prey to mental disorders in a bar near the Gare du Nord. A first crew of police fails to control Mr. Koumé, who struggles.
A policeman from the anti-crime brigade (BAC) then intervenes and performs a chokehold for several seconds by bringing him to the ground; he then resumed the chokehold for two minutes, while Amadou Koumé returned.
The father of the family, who measures 1.90 m and weighs 107 kg, is held on his stomach, face against the ground and hands cuffed behind his back, for more than six minutes in total. He is then transported in a police car. His death will be declared at the police station.
The preliminary investigation carried out by the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN) ended in a dismissal, but a complaint with the constitution of a civil party by the family, which demanded a trial at the assizes, led to the reopening investigations.
“A slow mechanical asphyxiation”
The final medical expertise conducted during the investigation concluded that Mr. Koumé had succumbed to “pulmonary edema” improved by “slow mechanical asphyxia”. She added that “the cervical and laryngeal trauma” caused by the choke key had “participated in the occurrence of this asphyxia”, also “favoured” by its immobilization on the ground.
If “cocaine intoxication” was also noted, the expert’s report pointed out that the death “could have taken place without impregnation of cocaine and from the sole fact of slow mechanical asphyxiation”. At the end of the judicial investigation, the investigating judge had described the gestures as “poorly controlled” but concluded that the violence had “not been committed illegitimately”.
On the other hand, she had noted the “lack of discernment”, the “clumsiness” and the “negligence” of the two police officers who completed the “ventral decubitus” (tackle, belly on the ground) while Amadou Koumé “no longer presented any danger to others” and this without “inquiring about his state of health”.
The peacekeeper who carried out the choke keys said he was afraid he would grab his colleagues’ weapons, calling his second gesture a simple ‘raising of the head’, consisting of squeezing the chin and not the throat .
He had been indicted for the criminal qualification of “willful violence resulting in death without intention to give it”, which could have led him to the assizes, but he was finally returned to correctional for manslaughter like the other two defendants .
“Psychic Vulnerability”
In 2015, this peacekeeper had already been sanctioned for disproportionate use of force in another case. The major is suspected of not having given “the necessary orders” so that the state of the arrested, whose “psychic vulnerability” he knew, be verified.
“He should have been put in a lateral safety position in the bar and we should have checked his state of consciousness, both in the bar and in the bus. As a senior officer, I assume what happened”, to -it is recognized during the instruction.
The family had requested proceedings against the referrals of the interveners who intervened that evening, for “non-assistance to a person in danger”, but the instruction did not conclude in this direction.
Asked by AFP, the lawyers for the police and the family of the deceased did not wish to speak before the hearing.
A controversial technique, the choke key, banned in the gendarmerie and outdated since last July in the police, is at the heart of several investigations opened after the death of men arrested. In the case of Amadou Koumé, the Defender of Rights had judged in 2018 the use of this technique “neither necessary nor proportionate”.