How Jérôme Rodrigues lost an eye: what police body cameras reveal

On 26 January 2019, at around 4:30 pm, the situation was tense on Place de la Bastille in Paris: Act XI of the Yellow Vests protests was under way, and clashes had broken out between police and protesters. From his smartphone, Jérôme Rodrigues, 39, was documenting the protest by live-streaming on his Facebook page, one of the most followed in the movement. He was standing at the foot of the July Column, in the centre of the square, when an explosion rang out. His phone’s camera tipped over and pointed at the sky, still streaming live: Jérôme Rodrigues lay on the ground, struck in the eye by a rubber pellet from a sting-ball grenade. The injury would cost him his right eye.

Four years on, the case is still under judicial investigation. Yet the incident was filmed by dozens of cameras: those of protesters and of the many journalists at the scene, but also the city’s CCTV and the body cameras worn by some of the officers deployed that day. Index obtained all of this footage and cross-analysed it. After several months of investigation, the NGO is today publishing a reconstruction of the incident that reveals exactly how Jérôme Rodrigues lost his eye.

On the afternoon of Saturday 26 January 2019, police were deployed around the entire perimeter of Place de la Bastille, controlling who entered and left the square. In groups of ten to several dozen officers, they charged across the square to make arrests. Protesters threw projectiles at some groups of officers. Tear gas grenades were used frequently. Taken aback by the turn of events, many protesters showing no hostility whatsoever towards the police were still on the square.

It was in this context that, at 4:38 pm, three police units – one squad from the BAC, a plainclothes anti-crime unit, and two from the CSI, the police intervention units – rushed from the corner of Boulevard Bourdon towards the centre of the square. The BAC officers had spotted a protester who had allegedly thrown projectiles at the police and decided to arrest him. To cover their advance, they asked the CSI officers to follow. In all, nearly fifty officers were sent charging across Place de la Bastille, apparently under orders to arrest a single individual.

“Communication between the different groups on the ground was very poor,” Brice C., the officer who threw the grenade that struck Jérôme Rodrigues, later told investigators from the IGPN, the police’s internal affairs body. “Not everything went as planned,” he explained: because of the heavy, cumbersome equipment they carry, the CSI officers were unable to keep up with their plainclothes BAC colleagues. “A mistake,” was how CSI chief sergeant Georges N. summed it up when questioned, recounting that he had halted his men in the middle of the square, directly opposite the group of protesters Jérôme Rodrigues was standing in.

The footage from the officers’ body cameras is essential to understanding what happened. One of these cameras in particular, worn by the CSI officer immediately to the left of Brice C., recorded the entire police manoeuvre. Analysis of this video shows that, while running, officer Brice C. took a sting-ball grenade out of his pocket as a precaution: by the time he stopped in the middle of Place de la Bastille, he already had it in his hand.

Sting-ball grenades are officially classified as “war materiel”. They contain eighteen rubber projectiles which, on detonation, are propelled in all directions at an initial velocity of 400 to 500 kilometres per hour. Anyone within fifteen metres of the blast can be struck with great force by one or more of them. The rules for using the sting-ball grenade state that it must always be thrown “at ground level”, given how dangerous it is when it explodes.

Officer Brice C.’s throw can be seen in three of the available videos. By triangulating the data from them, Index was able to reconstruct the grenade’s trajectory in the 3D model. The throw does not appear to have complied with the rules: the grenade was not thrown at ground level but in an arc, rising to more than a metre before bouncing off the pavement and exploding on the ground.

In a report written that same evening, police captain Lionel P., Brice C.’s superior, stated that his subordinate had “no other means of getting away than to use a sting-ball grenade, throwing it on the ground in accordance with the rules of use”. Yet the available footage contradicts those claims.

Questioned by the IGPN and by the investigating judge, officer Brice C. claimed he had acted in “self-defence”: he said he threw his grenade in response to “a hail of projectiles” raining down on his group.

This account, however, is contradicted by the footage Index has analysed and is publishing today. 

First, the officers do not appear to have had anything thrown at them in the seven seconds between the moment they stopped in the middle of the square and the moment the grenade was thrown.

Second, the grenade was thrown at a group of protesters who were showing no “hostility” whatsoever and posed no apparent danger to the officers.

Among the twenty or so people around Jérôme Rodrigues, the footage shows several journalists and videographers filming the scene, as well as four volunteer medics – or street medics – clearly identifiable by their white clothing. Yet it was this group that a sting-ball grenade was thrown at.

Brice C.’s account is not the only one flatly contradicted by detailed analysis of the videos of the incident. Questioned as part of the IGPN inquiry, at least eleven of his fellow officers backed his account, despite the footage that disproves it.

Contacted by Index before publication, Brice C.’s lawyer, Gilles-William Goldnadel, maintains that “[his] client’s unit was the target of violence, and his action was part of the defence of his colleagues and himself in a climate of extreme tension.”

Since 14 January 2021, officer Brice C. has been under formal investigation (mise en examen) for “assault resulting in mutilation or permanent disability”. Classified as a serious crime, the offence can be tried before an assize court (cour d’assises). But whether the proceedings will go all the way to a conviction is far from certain, given recent case law in this type of case.

In December 2022, police officer Alexandre M. stood trial before an assize court for throwing a sting-ball grenade that cost trade unionist Laurent Theron an eye in 2016, in circumstances comparable to those in which Jérôme Rodrigues was maimed. After a three-day trial, the officer was acquitted. The court found that he had acted in self-defence, even though an IGPN report had found that “no hostile group or imminent danger was perceptible” when the grenade was thrown. In his closing speech, the officer’s lawyer, Laurent-Franck Liénard, had bluntly warned the court: “To convict my client is to castrate every CRS officer.”

The incident that maimed Jérôme Rodrigues is not an isolated case. Between September 2016 and April 2023, at least ten people lost an eye to sting-ball grenades thrown by the police. The website violencespolicières.fr has recorded more than 400 other injuries, 17% of them to the head.

According to the available studies, the French police appear to be the only force in Europe to use sting-ball grenades in public order policing. Civil society groups have been sounding the alarm for years. According to Amnesty International: “Sting-ball grenades must be banned from public order operations, as these projectiles strike people at random, with a high risk of serious injury.”

The Defender of Rights, France’s human rights ombudsman, has also criticised the use of “this weapon, which is liable to cause serious harm to the physical integrity of those it hits”, in a decision issued in 2019 on the case of a protester injured in Paris in 2016. Jacques Toubon, who headed the institution at the time, called on the Interior Minister to “undertake a thorough review of the appropriateness of issuing this weapon for public order operations.” 

A few months later, in September 2020, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced that the hand-thrown sting-ball grenade (GMD) issued to the National Police would be replaced by a new model, the GENL (‘non-lethal fragmentation grenade’), said to present “a lower level of danger” than the previous model. 

Yet a comparison of the two models’ technical specifications reveals no essential difference in the danger they pose: the new GENL remains a grenade whose fragments can seriously injure anyone near the point of explosion.

Since the start of the protests against the pension reform in January 2023, at least one more protester has lost an eye to a sting-ball grenade, and dozens more have been injured.