A police intervention near a Laval high school for death threats once morest a student was filmed and reacted in social networks.
Many wonder if excessive force was deployed to intercept the young people involved in this story.
The event would have occurred at lunchtime last Tuesday at the English-speaking Laval Senior Academy.
A 15-year-old allegedly went to the woods near the school when, he said, three other teenagers aged 16-17 and 18 started throwing rocks and branches at him and spitting on him.
The police were contacted and reportedly received information that one of the youths was armed with a knife and possibly a firearm.
In all, regarding thirty police officers were dispatched to the scene, including the canine squad.
In the video, we can see the police, weapons drawn, surround a young person and ask him to kneel.
A girl tells them that he doesn’t speak French and asks them to speak to her in English.
After telling them that he didn’t understand, the boy finally complied and got down on his knees.
Asked by TVA Nouvelles, the Laval Police Service (SPL) maintains that this intervention was carried out in the right way.
“The police were called following very violent gestures once morest a teenager threatened with death. They were responding to a call for a man armed with a knife and possibly a gun. The intervention was carried out according to the rules of the art”, Stéphanie Beshara, spokesperson for the SPL.
The young man faces charges of armed assault and death threat.
The two young girls who accompanied him, meanwhile, were able to leave the premises without consequence.
