Brussels Police to Pursue Legal Action Against Officers in Racist Video Scandal

The facts date back to 2018. Filmed videos show two uniformed policewomen on board their service vehicle from the Brussels Midi zone, driving through neighborhoods in Cureghem, Anderlecht. They were dancing to a techno music beat for a little over two minutes. They uttered racist insults: "Monkeys (...) A bunch of big faggots (...) It stinks here." A commissioner had drawn up and transmitted a report to the then chief of the Brussels Midi police zone after internal denunciations, on October 19, 2018. He had provisionally suspended these two policewomen in their thirties with a 25% salary deduction, on October 22, 2018.

December 11, 2020. New twist. In a decision, the Council of State annulled the severe disciplinary sanction of pecuniary demotion for one of these two policewomen - Cindy B. who is still serving in the Brussels Midi police zone. Her lawyers Patricia Minsier, Nathan Mouraux and Marc Uyttendaele had brought the case before the court. The judges felt that this sanction should legally have been notified to Cindy B. within 15 days, i.e. no later than March 24, 2019, and not on March 28, 2019, i.e. four days too late.

Today, the publication of certain video sequences and political pressure can lead to legal proceedings. "I will go to court, in civil proceedings, because I do not accept that the image of my police zone is broken like this by the behavior of a minority of people who have no place in the police," Jurgen De Landsheer, the new chief of the Brussels Midi police, told the newspaper La Capitale.

"In this case, what is just as scandalous as the treatment of the racist remarks of these policewomen, is the behind-the-scenes: it is these same policewomen who destroyed the career of one of their superiors, a commissioner who had 38 years of good and loyal service and whom they have shamelessly accused of being a so-called racist and Nazi; whereas he was not at all and they actually put words in his mouth that came out of their own mouths," an outraged police source said.