Barely out of the hospital, Pierre Picavet, president of Flag, the LGBT association for police personnel, describes the homophobic assault he suffered in the night from Friday to Saturday in Paris.
“I have just learned that I must undergo surgery in the coming days, because I have a fracture of the left orbital bone.” On the phone, Pierre Picavet’s voice remained heavy with emotion as we reached him this Monday after his release from the hospital. Saturday, August 29 around 4 a.m., the police officer, who is also president of the LGBT Flag association, was assaulted as he was leaving a bar in the Marais district, in Paris. Seriously injured (internal bleeding, an open-skull fracture…), he received a medical certificate of 40 days of total incapacity for work (ITT). His alleged attacker, born in 2006 and living in Saint-Denis, was arrested on the night of the incident. Not having a criminal record, he was placed under judicial supervision.
This night, Pierre Picavet was in plain clothes when he left Krash, a gay cruising bar, when he crossed paths with his attacker. “At first, he wasn’t aggressive but I quickly saw the hatred in his eyes, recounts the Flag activist. I understood that I was going to be assaulted when he shouted ‘I am going to kill you, you dirty fag’.” To try to deter him, the officer flashed his badge. “I told him that I was a cop and not to mess with me.” In vain.
No immediate court appearance
Alcoholic, the man threw a bottle of whisky at his head, opening his skull, before pinning his arms and legs to seize his mobile phone. “The only means of defense I had was to bite him on the cheek. I lose my balance and I fall,” recounts the victim. On the ground, the officer received several kicks to the face, accompanied by homophobic insults. He owes his salvation to a bystander, who came to his aid before following his attacker: “Without this man, who is truly a hero, I think I would have been killed.”
Initially, the arrested suspect was due to appear this Monday in an immediate appearance before the Paris judiciary court. His lawyer, Me Etienne Deshoulières, obtained that an examining judge be seized. The facts appear to warrant a referral to the Court of Assizes, we are told: “In light of the situation, we believe that the criminal qualification must be seriously investigated, and not simply retained as a correctional violence.” The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed the opening of an investigation for “violence followed by incapacity of more than eight days committed because of the victim’s sexual orientation.”
/ Flag
