Police to wear badge numbers
From 2013 officers will have to wear a matriculation number on their uniform, not seen since 1985
POLICE officers will return to wearing badge numbers from 2013, the government has announced.
Interior minister Manuel Valls said: “To be respected, the police must be respectful of citizens.”
“Police will wear an element of identification on their uniform or arm band. In short it is the return of matriculation, because we need this form of identification,” he added.
He has stopped short of an original plan to oblige officers to provide receipts when they stop members of the public.
The plan would have led to more bureaucracy and officers complained it would upset their rapport with members of the public.
“With a receipt, some little gang leader, controlled in the morning, just has to show this piece of paper to escape controls for the rest of the day,” said Patrice Ribeiro, the head of the police union Synergie-Officiers.
Stop and search policies are a chief complaint in areas of France with a high ethnic minority population. Although no records are kept, the anecdotal evidence that racial minorities are unfairly targeted is overwhelming.
Although the law obliges officers to reveal their name or number when asked, this is often ignored.
Numbers disappeared from uniforms during a redesign in 1985 and have not appeared during subsequent updates.
Photo: Phovoir
