Boukrourou and Others v. France

Information Note on the Court’s case-law 212

November 2017

Boukrourou and Others v. France - 30059/15

Judgment 16.11.2017 [Section V]

Article 2

Article 2-2

Use of force

Death of mentally ill man following during arrest by police officers: no violation

Article 3

Degrading treatment

Inhuman treatment

Facts – A man suffering from a psychiatric illness died during his arrest by police in a pharmacy. The police officers had been called in by the pharmacist, who had reported the presence in his establishment of an agitated person suffering from psychiatric disorders. The investigating judges dropped the case against the police officers. The applicants’ appeals were dismissed.

Law

Article 2: The force used by the officers in attempting to control the man may have caused the fatal outcome. The police officers were only aware that he was undergoing psychiatric treatment and could not have known of the danger arising from the combined effect of his heart complaint and the stress he was undergoing. Therefore, although there was some form of causal link between the force used by the police officers and the man’s death, that particular outcome had not been foreseeable under the circumstances of the case.

The police could not have been unaware of the man’s vulnerability, having been informed by telephone of his psychiatric illness when they were called out. The officers should have verified his state of health, as he had been placed under their responsibility by the force of circumstances. However, the swift request for assistance issued by the police officers and the rapid intervention of the emergency services on site ruled out any failure on the part of the authorities to meet their obligation to protect the man’s life.

Conclusion: no violation (unanimously).

Article 3: The injuries the medical experts found on the body were caused by the arresting officers and corresponded to the acts described and acknowledged by the police officers.

Although the man had shown signs of agitation in the pharmacy, he had subsequently sat down on a chair and had calmed down somewhat by the time the police arrived. The police officers invited him several times to leave the premises. However, when he refused they decided to remove him by force even though he was not a person who posed a threat to other people’s lives and physical integrity or to his own welfare and therefore needed controlling. Owing to the difficulties they were having in removing him from the premises and handcuffing him the police officers punched him twice in the solar plexus. Such treatment of a vulnerable man was neither justified nor strictly necessary and only served to increase his agitation and resistance, so reinforcing his feeling of exasperation and, at the very least, of confusion at the course events had taken.

Inside the police van, although the man was vulnerable owing to both his psychiatric illness and the fact that he was in police custody, he was kept face down, handcuffed to a fixed point with three police officers standing over him applying their full weight to different parts of his body. The officers were plainly unable to cope with the situation, over which they seemed to have lost control.

There was nothing to suggest that the violence inflicted on the man was the result of any intention on the part of the police to humiliate him or make him suffer. Instead, it may have been due to a lack of preparedness, experience, appropriate training or equipment. Even though the case file showed that they had been informed of his psychiatric problems, the police officers did not appear to have considered how they should broach the man or respond to a possible negative or aggressive reaction on his part. The violent, repeated and ineffective acts inflicted on a vulnerable person constituted an infringement of human dignity and reached a threshold of severity incompatible with Article 3 of the Convention.

Conclusion: violation (unanimously).

Article 41: EUR 30,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage, breaking down as follows: EUR 6,000 for the victim’s wife, EUR 6,000 each for his parents, and EUR 4,000 each for his two brothers and his sister.

(See also Scavuzzo-Hager and Others v. Switzerland, 41773/98, 7 February 2006, Information Note 83; and Tekın and Arslan v. Belgium, 37795/13, 5 September 2017, Information Note 210)

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This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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