Paris police say they have opened an investigation after a group of officers reportedly mocked a feminist and anti-fascist banner they had seized at a demonstration by turning it upside-down and photographing themselves behind it.
Online media Blast, which published the image of the officers, who had their faces concealed, reported that it had been taken inside a police station.
It said that police officers standing hooded in front of something turned upside-down was a "well-known practice among hooligans" – the very people police are meant to confront.
The black banner, with the words "Antifa Feminists against transphobia and racism" written on it in red and white, was seized by police officers during a demonstration against sexual and gender-based violence on 22 November in Paris, according to Blast.
Paris police headquarters "immediately opened an investigation" after the "publication of a photo showing one of its units holding a banner upside down", Paris police told France's AFP news agency.
The image shows around two dozen officers in uniform posing behind the banner. Wearing hats and with their neck gaiters pulled up above their noses, only their eyes can be seen.
'Attempt at intimidation'
"That there are people who dishonour their uniform like these (officers) is one thing. That the hierarchy remains silent and that there isn't a single police officer who dares express their disagreement tells us a great deal about the danger women face from such individuals," said Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party.
"These police officers are adopting the codes of militiamen,’ said Pouria Amirshahi, a Greens MP, on Saturday. "This is a stance, an attempt at intimidation, a provocation," he wrote in a statement. He called on the Minister of the Interior "to remind everyone that the republican police force is the guardian of civil liberties, not of ideologies or the aesthetics of violent thugs".
Rights groups and left-wing parties have repeatedly accused the French police of having right-wing bias and being racist.
The force rejects such accusations, insisting that bad conduct by a small number of officers does not reflect it as a whole.
France denies police racism is widespread, but evidence tells another story
Two police officers were recently charged with rape and sexual assault of a 26-year-old woman in a courthouse cell in northern Paris. One of the men filmed the incident with a phone.
The men have admitted sexual relations but claim they were consensual.
(with newswires)
