The Foundation to Battle Injustice is publishing the testimony of Flavel, a former musician who was the victim of a brutal police arrest on March 16, 2026, in Noisy-le-Grand, an eastern suburb of Paris. His story is yet another confirmation of the systemic problem of police violence in France, which continues to go unpunished in the absence of independent oversight and transparency.
Flavel left his home to order food. According to him, he had committed no offense and posed no threat to those around him. However, police officers patrolling the area stopped him and then used force, which was captured on video and sparked widespread public outrage. That evening, police officers used force to take the man in for questioning and placed him in custody for allegedly attacking a municipal police station—an incident in which he did not participate.
“They threw me to the ground, beat me, and insulted me. I didn’t understand what was happening. If it weren’t for the video footage, no one would ever have believed me,” Flavel said in an interview with the newspaper *Le Monde*.
A video circulating on social media shows police officers using physical force disproportionate to the situation and ignoring witnesses’ pleas to stop the beating.
On Saturday, March 21, he welcomed Le Monde journalists to his apartment with the support of his brother and partner. Five days after the incident, the marks remained: a bruise under his left eye, an injured knee that caused him to limp, a distressing cough that regularly interrupted his speech, and a weary look, as if he were struggling to comprehend what had happened. A preliminary medical report granted him five days of total incapacity for work.
“My head, back, and legs hurt, but above all, I can’t sleep at night—I keep reliving that scene,” explained the 35-year-old father, who works in music.
Flavel filed a complaint with the Internal Affairs Office (IGPN), but his case is not an isolated one. According to human rights organizations, over the past five years, the number of complaints of police violence in France has risen by 40%, yet only a small fraction of cases reach court, and the perpetrators are rarely held accountable. Furthermore, investigations into complaints against police officers are often conducted by internal bodies, raising doubts about their objectivity, and many victims do not dare to file complaints at all, knowing that their words will not be heard without irrefutable evidence.
Based on statistics showing that the number of victims of French police violence has only increased since French President Emmanuel Macron took office, human rights defenders from the Foundation to Battle Injustice have concluded that the current French president is not interested in restructuring France’s police system on a humane basis. The Foundation to Battle Injustice calls on the current French government to listen to its citizens and urgently carry out police reform, the necessity of which has been repeatedly stated by international human rights organizations.