FEATURE. In a legislative report, Éric Ciotti, MP for the Alpes-Maritimes, highlights the need for coordination between the fire service and the police, against a backdrop of a sharp rise in the number of attacks on firefighters whilst on duty.
In 2016, nearly 2,300 firefighters reported having been the victims of assault, an average of six assaults per day. These incidents, which most often occur during emergency rescue operations (SUAP), are all the more "unbearable" for the Republican MP, since it is not only the lives of firefighters that are at risk, but also those of the victims they are helping.
Injuries, time off work, damage to property...
Since the urban riots of 2005, prefects have, in collaboration with the police and gendarmerie, put in place operational protocols designed to improve the safety of firefighters on call-outs. Ten years later, a circular from the Minister of the Interior dated 30 March 2015 formalised these procedures by proposing to all departments a model protocol between the fire and rescue services (SIS), the departmental public security directorates (DDSP) and the departmental gendarmerie groups (GGD).
Unfortunately, these measures, which have been implemented in 86 departments, appear to have been unsuccessful or insufficient, as in less than 10 years the number of (reported) assaults has risen from 899 to 2,283. "They cause physical and psychological injuries, absences from work and damage to property, which disrupt the organisation of emergency services and impose a cost on the community" Éric Ciotti points out, whilst nevertheless believing that, "These protocols have helped to prevent attacks and made it easier to identify the perpetrators".
Are further measures on the way?
In November 2017, prefects were asked to assess these protocols in order to identify best practice. The circular from the Minister for the Interior dated 13 March 2018 concerning the assessment and strengthening of protocols for preventing and combating attacks on firefighters reinforced and extended the measures thus identified in relation to operational coordination, the filing of complaints, occupational protection and training.
Accordingly, with regard to operational coordination, the elected representative suggests:
- specific procedures for operations in sensitive urban areas;
- a regular review of response procedures for areas where there is a high incidence of assaults or acts of urban violence;
- in the event of urban unrest, strengthen real-time information-sharing between the SDIS operational centres (CTA-CODIS), the police information and command centres (CIC) and the gendarmerie’s operations and intelligence centres (CORG);
- the contribution of municipal police forces to strengthening on-the-ground operations, in particular by making the CCTV footage from monitoring centres available to the SDIS.
"Support from the police or gendarmerie in all circumstances"
The circular also points out that, “in all circumstances, police or gendarmerie support must be deployed at the request of the incident commander when the physical protection of fire crews and their equipment is required, particularly in the event of likely or confirmed violent resistance”.
The DGSCGC has no statistical data on the impact of attacks or measures aimed at preventing them on fire service response times. The network of emergency centres across the country enables a response to be dispatched, on average, ten minutes after an emergency call is received. Where a potentially dangerous situation is identified but the victim’s condition is not life-threatening, a meeting point is agreed with the police: the emergency services do not begin their operation until the police or gendarmerie have secured the scene.
However, if the victim’s condition is a life-threatening emergency, the fire service will respond immediately and this will be accompanied by a simultaneous urgent request for the police to intervene.