A French public prosecutor has opened a deliberate homicide investigation against a police officer who shot dead a driver during a traffic stop on Wednesday, the prosecutor's office said on Friday, as lawyers and sociologists report a jump in lethal vehicle police shootings.
The driver, 24, was fatally shot in the southern city of Nice after he refused to stop, rammed a police car and refused to leave his car, the Nice prosecutor said. The car was later found to be stolen.
The officer, 23, told investigators he shot at the driver because his life and the lives of his colleagues were in danger. The officer has been released from police custody. The identities of the driver and the officer have not been made public.
Ouadie Elhamamouchi and Sefen Guez Guez, lawyers for the deceased driver's family, told Reuters a witness' video showed the car was stationary at the moment of the shooting.
"This video and the witnesses clearly show that at no point was their any immediate risk to the life or physical integrity of the police officer or his colleagues," the lawyers said.
A Reuters tally showed 10 people have been shot dead so far this year by police after failing to obey a traffic stop. That compares with 2 deaths in both 2021 and 2022.
Earlier on Wednesday, the day of the Nice shooting, the passenger of a vehicle in Rennes in northwest France died after being shot in another traffic stop operation.
Fabien Jobard, a researcher at the Sociological Research Centre for Law and Penal Institutions (CESDIP), traces the rise in number of traffic stop shootings to legislation passed in 2017 which broadened when an officer can use their firearm.
Jobard believes there is now a perception within the police force that the judicial risk is weak. He also said there were ambiguities in the law.
The Alliance Police union did not respond to Reuters calls after business hours. A spokesperson for the police declined to comment on the Nice case because the investigation was at a preliminary stage.
(Reporting by Layli Foroudi and Juliette Jabkhiro; Editing by Richard Lough and Josie Kao)
