A UN expert on Wednesday called on the French government to throw out a bill that would enshrine the presumption that police officers who use firearms are acting within the scope of their duties unless evidence proves otherwise, a decision that could legitimize and normalize violence against civilians.
In commenting on the potential consequences if this bill passes and becomes law, Morris Tidball-Binz, UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions stated:
The duty to investigate every potentially unlawful killing rests with the State… It cannot be displaced, in law or in practice, by requiring victims or their families to rebut a legal presumption that the use of potentially lethal force was lawful before the facts have been independently established.
Draft bill 691, which establishes the presumption of lawful shooting for authorities using their weapons was passed in its first reading by the French National Assembly, and it now heads to the Senate, which is the upper house of the French Parliament. In one of its earlier drafts, the wording of the bill was drafted as a “presumption of self-defense” under the Penal Code, but later it was rewritten to modify the Code of Security. Having been approved by 313 votes to 199 at the most recent reading of the bill, its supporters largely say that by giving enforcement officers the benefit of the doubt in shooting cases, it protects them from unnecessary criminal liability.
However, critics have stated that the new legal presumption would shift the burden of proof and require victims’ families and prosecutors to prove that a shooting was neither proportionate nor necessary. This, in turn, could grant officers institutional impunity, and could lead to an increase in fatal shootings and a decline in public trust. Additionally, Tidball-Binz pointed out that placing whole reliance on evidence to rebut the presumption slows down the entire judicial process.
France, which has one of the highest rates of fatal shootings by police officers in Europe, has drawn global outrage in recent years due to the disproportionate number of killings that have affected primarily Black and minority communities. For instance, the 2023 murder of teenager Nahel Merzouk by officers illustrated how police use of firearms harms communities, and these impacts will only be exacerbated by the passage of the bill, Tidball-Binz said.
Tidball-Binz said that, if adopted, the bill would violate Principle 9 of the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, which mandates strict limits on the use of lethal force.