Valentin Gendrot: "Only a secret trip to the police station can reveal something you have never seen"

Journalist Valentin Gendrot, a 32-year-old journalist, in a book published on Thursday, September 3 ("Flic", ed. Goutte d'or), reports violence, racist and homophobic insults, as well as a lack of vehicles for vehicles, suicide and crime: two of the intruders to the Paris police. eventful year.

How have you been in the last few hours since Flic was released?
My book "Cop" and good media coverage indicate that this is a public concern. I believe this when I started this adventure, but two years of immersion is a long time, we have a lot of time to let ourselves get by with hesitation. Is society ready to listen to this story with all its violence? Am I going to go to the police station after six months? Everything has been far behind me since its release. I am relieved that we can now talk about two French police taboos, both police violence and police fatigue.

Are you threatened or intimidated when you start speaking openly?
Not only last Thursday, the day this book was published, I received a message from a former police colleague in the 19th district of Paris explaining the surprise in the publication of the book.
Valentin Gendrot in the uniform he wore for two years.
Valentin Gendrot in the uniform he wore for two years. © AFP

The Paris prosecutor's office launched an investigation into the person who beat you who was mentioned in your book to identify the fact that it is criminal ", a study entrusted to IGPN, what do you think? ?
This is good news, when the problem was first investigated, the dice were loaded. The young man we told complained about the internal service at the police station in the district "XIX" ... Moreover, my friends agreed in front of me to write the version that is right for them. I promise that I will disclose this error to justify this injustice, but I wish I could do that with the opportunity of investigation. Today I am relieved because it is time to let me know about what. “It happened at that time, and on a personal level, to be able to reconsider my testimony.

How can we describe this kind of racism as the diversity in police power continues to increase? Did you get the impression that your book started a conversation about the vehicle problems faced by the police, the problem of suicide, racism? Or have all the cops been attacked?
I witnessed the deaths of immigrants and prisoners at the 19th district police station in Paris. This is the act of a racist and violent police minority. The problem is not the skin color of the police officers, but how they are trained. And in my book it shows that much-needed training is not enough, at least for contract police. Control yourself: After just three months, you gain the strength to take up arms on the street and accompany the arrests ... Not to mention domestic violence: three hours of training including two hours of watching a fiction movie (in this case, My Maiwenn King). As for the topic of ethics, more than three months, it's less than 1% of the training we have stated. We can cite an example, but we understand that we are building a "cheap police force" with the words of one of our instructors.

Whether you choose to spy on other journalists and not write long-term reports by officially publishing who you are, says Raymond Depardon with "Faits Divers". For example?
I start with a simple observation: only an illegal trip to the police station can indicate that you have never seen it. Infiltration is a journalistic tool (such as that done by Nellie Blye and Albert Londres or now by Florence Aubenas), to show the daily life of police officers in popular areas without restrictions, allowing them to go indefinitely in accordance with reality, to say what cannot be seen ,