Organizations
France has two national general-purpose law enforcement agencies:
In addition, the national government has a Customs service (Douanes). Those three agencies are the only ones legally capable of making full arrests or serving search warrants.
Local governments (communes) may maintain a Police Municipale ("Municipal police") forces, which have very limited law enforcement powers outside of traffic issues and local ordinance enforcement.
Rural communes may also form a garde champêtre or Police Rurale("Rural Police), which is responsible for limited local patrol and protecting the environment. And which acts as a pseudo auxiliary to the Gendarmerie Nationale.
Procedures
Administrative policing
The police administrative comprises a variety of actions undertaken under the direction and supervision of the executive branch, notably the prefect, police and gendarmerie forces conduct a variety of actions ensuring public order. They includes:
Judicial policing
The police judiciaire comprises a variety of actions undertaken under the direction and supervision of the judiciary. They include:
- pursuing and arresting suspects
- interrogating suspects in some phases of judicial enquiries
- gathering evidence
- serving search warrants
These actions must follow the rules given in the Code of Penal Procedure (Code de procédure pénale).
In order to better fulfill these missions, some sections of the French National Police (police judiciaire) are specialized in criminal enquiries; the Gendarmerie counterpart are the sections de recherche (research sections).
Two important notions are those of "officer of judiciary police" (officier de police judiciaire or OPJ), "agent of judiciary police" (agent de police judiciaire or APJ) or "agent of judiciary police assistant" (APJ adjoint). Only OPJs may perform full arrests or serve search warrants; APJs may only assist them in these talks. In case a suspect has been apprehended by an APJ, he/she must be brought before an OPJ for a full arrest. According to the law, any citizen can apprehend the author of a crime or of an offence that can be punished by a prison sentence, and lead him/her to an OPJ (this includes APJ, APJ assistants). However, this is problematic in case of a "simple" citizen due to the estimation of what can be punished by a prison sentence or not, and due to possible abuse (abuses are a restriction of the individual freedom and can be sued for illegal confinement).
The judicial policing is described in the articles 12 to 29 of the Code de procédure pénale (penal procedure act).
See Also
External links
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