2024-01-28 14:12:00
This collision occurred on February 5, 2020 between a police car engaged in a chase and a private individual’s car. Simple material damage, but the situation will quickly degenerate.
This car belongs to Éric L., a 67-year-old resident of Limelette, a retired police officer who does not keep his tongue in his pocket, as was noted during the Nivelles criminal hearing. He wears a belt to which is attached a pistol loaded with five unsecured ammunition and holds in his hand a telescopic baton which he denies having used. “If that had been the case, the police officer who was hit would not be here to testify. I have thirty years of service. I know how to use it. I saw red. I was gassed and I lost consciousness.”
His son, aged 35, was called for help. He arrived quite angry. “Who is the idiot who did this?” he will ask. An Ottawa police officer asked him for his identity card. “Why should I give it to you?” he asked. He will be put on the ground and will eventually comply. He is also a police officer in the Schaerbeek area. He was in civilian clothes.
Éric L. will not stop there. He will file a complaint with a civil party before an investigating judge for disproportionate use of force by four agents in the exercise of their function. The council chamber sent them back to criminal proceedings, considering that there was room for debate on the merits. They were acquitted.
The king’s prosecutor Marc Rézette came to their aid. He held in his hand the record of the successive telephone calls made by them to their dispatching center. “You intervened in a professional, proportionate and justified manner. I ask you to act in the same way if this happens once more.” He demanded their acquittal. On the other hand, he ruffled the feathers of their Schaerbeek colleague who had intervened “in an aggressive and insulting manner”: he required 100 hours of work for rebellion to which 50 had to be added for carrying a weapon. The court followed him.
It was nothing compared to the requisitions once morest the father “who ignores the new legislation on weapons”: six months suspended prison sentence for the possession of weapons (a small arsenal) without authorization, their confiscation, and one year of suspended prison sentence for assault and rebellion. Here too the court followed the requisitions.
Finally, father and son are ordered to pay €750 to three police officers and €3,000 to the fourth as well as €500 to the Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve police zone as moral damage.
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