French face prosecution for 'insulting' government employees
We read:
"When Jean-Jacques Reboux was stopped in his battered Citro‰n AX by police in Paris and accused of obstructing the traffic, he protested his innocence. "I was in a traffic jam at a crossroads and I wasn't obstructing anything at all," he told The Times. First, Mr Reboux called the police officer a canard (a duck). Then he lost his cool and called him a connard, which translates roughly as stupid bastard.
The term landed the Parisian publisher in court and he was fined 150 euros ($236) this month for the peculiarly Gallic crime of outrage, or insulting a public official. The offence - which carries a maximum sentence of six months in prison and a _7,500 fine - dates from Napoleonic times and is designed to protect "the dignity ... of a person charged with a public service mission".
Behind the legalese is the belief that civil servants are the embodiment of a French State that deserves the respect and support of all its citizens. The number of prosecutions for insulting police officers and other civil servants has risen from 17,700 in 1996 to 31,731 last year in what critics say is an abuse of government power.
Source
5 comments:
They're french. Who cares!
How on earth is anyone in France able to criticize what their government is doing?
we should try this here
In the U.S. the cop would have simply used a tazer to control the "attack". Youtube is full of examples of how to take care of obnoxious people.
Such laws should be used more often to enforce basic good manners...
The ever increasing agression (verbal and physical) against law enforcement officers is rapidly degrading their effectiveness if not dealt with.
Of course their "soft" attitude, which in Europe has cast the police into a role that's more social worker than law enfocement doesn't help.
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