A French police officer is under investigation after a video emerged showing him violently throwing a man to the ground in Carcassonne in southern France, days after a separate scandal involving recordings of officers in the city making racist, misogynistic and conspiracy-related remarks.
A judicial investigation was opened on Sunday for “intentional violence by a person vested with public authority.”
The footage, shared on social media by MP Thomas Portes, shows several police officers standing around before one walks up behind a young man and hurls him to the ground.
Once down, the man can be seen holding his head in his arms as other people appear and protest, while someone says: “It’s being filmed.”
“In Carcassonne, the police are out of control!” Portes wrote.
The incident occurred on 21 June during the Fête de la musique music festival. The police officers were responding to reports of “noise disturbance”.
In a statement issued on Monday, the public prosecutor’s office said the man, identified as a 29-year-old homeless person, was not the subject of the intervention. He was not arrested and did not lodge a complaint.
On 3 July, he was found “in cardiac arrest” at his camp. An investigation was then opened to determine the cause of his death. But according to the findings of the autopsy carried out on 9 July, “any suspicious traumatic injury pointing to the involvement of a third party” has been ruled out.
The Inspectorate General of the National Police (IGPN) has also been called in.
The prosecutor’s office said it had referred the case to the Marseille branch of the IGPN on Sunday, “as soon as it became aware of this video”.
César R., one of the four officers suspended following the release of a previous video by the newspaper Midi Libre on 8 September, also appears in the new footage.
He is a witness at the scene but does not intervene.
In the first video, he was reportedly responsible for nearly 90% of the hateful remarks recorded during the patrol. He was a volunteer with the National Rally’s security detail.
Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella’s party has condemned the remarks made by the police officers, which included racist insults, a call for a coup and the repetition of a transphobic conspiracy theory targeting Brigitte Macron.
In a statement sent to several media outlets, including Euronews, the National Rally announced that the officer had been expelled from the party and removed from its security team.