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In November 2001, French police trade unions organised a series of demonstrations calling for more resources, jobs, pay and respect, and highlighting increasing crime levels . In the run-up to the presidential and general elections in spring 2002, the dispute has assumed a clearly political character around the issue of public safety, a theme that is high on the agenda for the coming elections.
Following the fatal shooting of two police officers during an arrest in a suburb of Paris in October 2001, police trade unions held demonstrations from 10 November onwards to demand more jobs and resources and greater 'respect' from the state and the population as a whole. Police officers are employed by the Ministry of the Interior, while gendarmes are Ministry of Defence officers and thus have no right to freedom of expression or right to strike - therefore, while police officers participated in the demonstrations, gendarmes were represented by their spouses. Against a backdrop of discussions on introducing the 35-hour week in the civil service (FR0110113F), police officers have stressed the difficulties of their job, the perceived inadequacy of their pay and the rise in crime rates. They are criticising a law on the 'presumption of innocence', which came into force on 1 January 2001, for increasing the number of judicial procedures which must be followed, a process which is said to favour those placed in custody and their lawyers.
Despite the success of the demonstrations, the divided character of trade unionism within the police force - which is one of the highly-unionised parts of the civil service, with a union membership rate of over 70% across all branches and ranks of the police force - meant that there was a series of separate rallies in Paris and the rest of the country. Since the break-up of the powerful Independent Police Union Federation (Fédération autonome des syndicats de police, FASP) in the early 1990s, trade unionism in the police force has not been restored to its previous unity. This is why the National Police Officers' Union (Syndicat national des officiers de police, SNOP), which is a part of the National Federation of Independent Unions (Union nationale des syndicats autonomes, UNSA), demonstrated alone on 10 November.
On 21 November, it was the turn of Synergie (the second largest union of police officers) and Alliance (rank-and-file police officers and higher ranks), which are member organisations of the French Confederation of Professional and Managerial Staff-General Confederation of Professional and Managerial Staff (Confédération française de l'encadrement-Confédération générale des cadres, CFE-CGC). The National Police Superintendents and High-Level Civil Servant's Union (Syndicat des commissaires et hauts fonctionnaires de la police nationale, SCHFPN), which is the union with most support among police superintendents, took part in this demonstration, although it kept its distance from the other unions.
The National Uniformed Officers' Union (Syndicat national des policiers en tenue, SNPT), affiliated to UNSA and the most popular union among rank-and file police officers outside Paris, did not take part in the action initiated on 17 November 2001 by its sectoral federation, UNSA-police, which is seeking to reconstitute an organisation capable of commanding majority support among police officers. However, SNPT did launch a call for a demonstration on 22 November alongside the General Police Union (Syndicat général de la Police, SGP), an affiliate of the General Confederation of Labour-Force ouvrière (Confédération générale du travail-Force ouvrière, CGT-FO), which had hitherto not called on its members to demonstrate.
According to opinion polls, the anxieties of police officers seem to have the support of the general public, and have been borne out by the latest statistics, recently made public, showing a 4.8% increase in crime rates in Ile-de-France (the Paris region) in 2000. The unions' actions have assumed a clearly political character around the topic of public safety problems, which will be high on the agenda in the run-up to the general and presidential elections in spring 2002.
The government, stating that number of police officers has risen by more than 15% over the past four years, initially responded by putting forward financial measures worth FRF 1.7 billion (around EUR 260 million). It then gave a Socialist deputy, Julien Dray, the task of producing an evaluation of the recent law on the presumption of innocence. However, the justice minister stipulated that there was no question of substantial amendments being made to this piece of legislation.
The government has to deal with two other issues in this area: first, the demands for greater public safety measures made by many deputies from suburban Parisian constituencies after the murders of the two police officers in October 2001; and second, the discontent of a section of the left regarding the anti-terrorist measures taken in the wake of the attacks on the USA on 11 September. Prime Minister Lionel Jospin has, however, reiterated his refusal to entrust mayors with the responsibility for public safety at the local level. This has been a challenge for the government, which is experiencing problems putting together a coherent line of argument on an issue that has traditionally been favoured by the conservative opposition.