in recent years, the assaults of mayors are more and more numerous. Latest facts in date ? Young campers have taken an elected official, while another was hit with party goers. The conclusion is quickly drawn up : one year after the violent death of the mayor of the Signs, the mayors still suffer attacks and deplore the fact that justice is ” not an appointment “.
“If we are not helped by the justice, it doesn’t have to get up in the morning to ensure that communal living is going well,” said the Agency France-Presse Francis D’hulst, elected official of the town of Portbail in the Manche, which has been the victim of an assault last Thursday. 70-year-old, he had informed three campers twenty years as a municipal order not to allow them to install their tent on the parking lot of the beach. He had been warned also about the dangers of a fire near a pine forest in a drought.
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one of The individuals was first insulted, and then threatened to set fire to his car, before hitting him in the nape of the neck and in the back. “But it is the blow the next day by the prosecutor’s office, which has done me the most harm,” says Francis D’hulst, who had filed a complaint. Her attacker has been sentenced as a reminder of the law, “a court decision is dramatic for all mayors” says the elected official who claims to have received many messages of support from his colleagues since.
To Agnes Brown, vice-president and spokesperson of the Association of mayors of France (AMF), the case Portbail illustrates the extent to which mayors are lonely in the face of ” criminal acts “. “We regret that the criminal justice response is not at appointment “, she says in the Agence France-Presse, regretting that the perpetrators do not respond more quickly to their acts before the justice. “This year, 233 elected officials have already suffered an act of violence “, compared to 383 on the set of the last year and 361 in 2018, she says. Figures that it deems more ” talking that many assaults are not reported “.
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last week, another mayor, Philippe Becheau, has also been hit in Saint-Philippe-d’aiguille, a town of approximately 400 inhabitants in the east of Libourne (Gironde), in a response against disturbance by night in the village square. The winemaker 58-year-old testifies no longer sleep since the assault. “I am cool as a lamb, I start to become aggressive. Then, in September, I’ll begin a therapy, ” he says. “I will not let go. This is going to be my battle, I do not want things to remain there, ” he warns. In the Face of this kind of situation, “we ask that a criminal response is immediately made and that it is proportionate,” says the spokesman of the AMF. Because ” it must not be forgotten that the mayor represents the State in its common “.
sanctions “fast”
These attacks are produced a year after the death of Jean-Michel Mathieu, the mayor of Signes (Var), was knocked down by a van which he wanted to verbalize the occupants to have thrown rubble on the side of the road. This death is violent has outraged the political class and has resulted in a strengthening of the legal protection of mayors. The measures considered today to be inadequate by the chair (LR) of the commission des Lois of the Senate, Philippe Bas.
the senator of the Handle has written to the Prime minister, Jean Castex, and ask him to go further so that ” any form of violence against mayors should not be penalised for fast and proportionate “. “We also need an automatic support of court fees by the State “, adds the spokesperson of the MFA, who said that the epidemic of sars coronavirus ” does not help things.” “All the people who are allergic to rules develop even more,” she says. On the government side, Jean Castex, has for the time being denounced on Twitter as “facts” and “violence is unacceptable” in the wake of the assault of the mayor of Saint-Philippe-d’aiguille.
