While in Spain the debate regarding the use of force by the police resurfaces after , in the neighboring country a municipality is making an unusual decision. It is about the city of Saint-Denisannexed to Paris. The city, with almost 150,000 inhabitants, is famous for its Gothic basilica and for being the place where the Stade de France stands.
For a few days now, Saint-Denis has also been known for being the first city of more than 100,000 residents governed by the France Insoumise party, the organization founded ten years ago by Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Your new mayor, Bally Bagayoko Free Mp3 Downloadhas announced that it is going to disarm the local police, first stripping them of long riot weapons (the famous rubber ball shotguns). The controversy is served.
Bagayoko won the municipal elections on March 15, without having to attend the second round on the 22nd. He already warned during the campaign that he would disarm the municipal police, which has angered some police officers and also far-right sympathizers. Bagayoko, already sworn in as mayor, has clarified that the first measure will be adopted on rubber shotguns.
“For now we will maintain firearms, within the framework of a disarmament process. This begins with the development of a doctrine. We are doing it calmly, we are establishing a frame of reference“, clarified the new mayor of the town. This “gradual disarmament”, in any case, “is not an invitation to unleash chaos in the city,” he also warned.
Evidently, the measure has already raised quite a storm. Some municipalist leaders of the party The Republicans (Sarkozy, Chirac) have had words for Bagayoko’s measure. Éric Ciotti, elected mayor of Nice, said he had made an “appeal to the agents of Saint-Denis who are going to be disarmed and left at the mercy of those who threaten the Republic.”
For his part, Manuel Bompard, current national coordinator of La Francia Insumisa, has defended Bagayoko’s measure. “Just because the police are more armed does not mean there is less crime,” he defended, while also vindicating the idea of a “community police”: “We must rebuild the link between the police and citizens.” “A local police force does not have to replace a national one,” he recalled.
Rubber ball shotguns in Spain
In Spain, the national police, but nothing to do with the use of non-lethal weapons.
While municipal bodies do not usually regulate the use of long weapons. Nor are non-lethal long weapons, such as rubber shotguns. In Catalonia it has been prohibited since 2014 the use of rubber balls by the Mossosalthough the National Police and the Civil Guard can use these devices. Since then, the Mossos have used viscoelastic or foam cartridges.
Rubber ball shotguns already starred in gruesome events that year: in 2014 it was when fourteen immigrants who were trying to swim over the breakwater at the Tarajal Pass, in Ceuta, died while civil guards shot them with these devices and threw smoke canisters at them.
Rubber ball shotguns are not the only controversial device in the hands of police forces. In December of last year, a police intervention in Torremolinos (Málaga) caused the death of a 35-year-old man named Haitam Mejri. He received more than eight electric shocks with a taser, despite the fact that the manufacturer of this weapon recommends not accumulating them.
