French police officers convicted over 2015 chokehold death
Three French police officers have been found guilty of manslaughter after a black man died when he was pinned to the ground and put in a chokehold outside a Paris bar in 2015.
Amadou Koumé, whose name has become a protest slogan against police violence, died as the result of a “slow mechanical asphyxia” according to a medical expert, the court heard during the trial.
Koumé, 33, had been described in the media by his partner, Jessica Lefèvre, who led a long campaign for justice, as having suffered from psychological problems. He had undergone hospital treatment, at his own request, for panic attacks, hallucinations and a feeling of being persecuted.
On the day he died, the father-ofthree had taken a day off to pass his highway code test but had not gone to the test. He went to a bar near Paris’s Gare du Nord at around 11:30pm, where he ordered a beer and sat down.
Staff at the bar noticed that Koumé had begun talking to himself and was incoherent and raising his voice. A barman called police saying there was a man who appeared to have psychological problems. Police arrived just after midnight and decided to arrest him.
Koumé died after he was pinned to the ground by officers in the bar, put in a chokehold and subsequently left on his front, his hands cuffed behind his back, for more than six minutes.
The French rights ombudsman warned before the case came to trial that, faced with someone “in a situation of great psychological vulnerability”, there wasn’t enough dialogue sought and an emergency doctor should have been called.
The court heard that Koumé was not a danger to others at the time of his arrest.
At the trial, the state prosecutor said that necessary and proportionate force had been used to immobilise Koumé but that the officers were negligent in leaving him on his front.
The three police officers, who were not in court for the sentencing, were given 15-month suspended jail terms. Two officers were found at fault for not controlling the force used, and for leaving Koumé on his front without checking on his health. A more senior officer was found guilty of a “succession of negligence and failings”.
There was no confirmation of whether the police officers would appeal.
“We knew there would be no prison served but the fact they were judged guilty provides some peace,” Koume’s older sister Habi told Reuters outside the courtroom.
Eddy Arneton, a lawyer for the Koumé family, called the sentence lenient. During the trial, Arneton said that the officers had appeared to think of Koumé as an “animal”, describing him in court testimony as making “grunting” noises during the incident.
Rights groups have warned that accusations of brutal, racist treatment of people by French police remain largely unaddressed, in particular in deprived city suburbs.
In 2020, as public anger swelled over race discrimination following the death of George Floyd after being detained by police in the US, the French government promised “zero tolerance” for racism within law enforcement agencies.
Sebastian Roché, a political scientist at France’s National Centre for Scientific Research, told Reuters the sentence was light, but in line with past sanctions handed down by courts in similar cases.
“We note that the French judiciary has trouble condemning and sanctioning the police,” he said.