On 3 January 2020, Cédric Chauviat, a 42-year-old delivery man on a bike, was stopped by the police in Paris (they said he was talking on his mobile phone). At the end of the encounter, Cédric was dead, strangled, with serious damage to his neck. The strangling took place first while Cédric was standing up and continued while he was on the ground. According to the autopsy, he died of “asphyxiation associated with haemorrhaging of the two thyroid cartilages situated in the throat”. The police officer involved, named as Michael P., denied strangling him and claimed he had supported Cédric’s head with his arms throughout the encounter.
Strangling was, however, an official procedure. It’s aim was to “restrain an individual by reducing their capacity to breathe and their flow of blood to the brain”. In the 2008 police training manual, there are four different kinds:
- “strangulation by locking the head and the arms”
- “strangulation from behind with the lower arm”
- “strangulation by means of [the victim’s] clothing”
- “the technique of bringing [the victim] to the ground by strangulation”
No mention of the knee, you’ll notice, but the principle’s the same. The knee on the neck is an international police method of restraint – used not only in the US (as we saw in the case of George Floyd) but in the UK (it was used on a victim, in the street, in front of witnesses, soon after George Floyd’s murder).
Nevertheless, it looked for a brief moment as if the strangulation method would cease in France after Cédric’s death and the protests following George Floyd’s murder on 25 May in the US. “The method of taking someone by the throat, called strangulation”, said the French interior minister on 8 June, “will be abandoned, and will not be taught [in training courses].” But a few days later, after pressure from the French equivalent of the Police Federation, it was reinstated pending an alternative method being found. Strangulation would continue but it would be “practised in a measured way, with discernment”!
Meanwhile, inquiries have taken place, a report delivered to “the authorities” in September, but no action has been taken by the minister of the interior. At this moment, thousands of new police recruits are learning how to strangle their suspects. And there is no justice or vindication in sight for the Chouviat family.
So, for what it may be worth, I will keep the words of Cédric’s father blue-tacked to my study door in solidarity, and as a reminder that we should all, wherever we live, and perhaps especially if we think we’ve “taken back control” of our forces of law and order, follow his example. Immediately after his son’s murder he said:
“I am the father of Cédric Chouviat; they have assassinated my son. Emmanuel Macron, I will go to war against you, against your state.”
« Je suis le père de Cédric Chouviat ; on a assassine mon fils. Emmanuel Macron, je vais en guerre contre vous, contre votre état. »
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