On Monday 5 October 2026, a day of lycée pupils’ mobilisation in Dunkerque (Nord), tensions occur in the Basse-Ville area, very concentrated according to France 3. In total, eight people, all minors, were arrested in the city that day according to the prefecture (France 3).
A video widely shared on social media, filmed from several angles, shows a national police 4x4 heading at speed towards protesters, a few hundred metres from the private lycée Vauban. France 3 and the Les Révélateurs unit of France Télévisions examined it on 7 October and confirm that it is the same recent scene, located in Dunkerque. As the vehicle passes, several young people run away; the 4x4 hits a roadworks barrier and a bollard, enters rue du Fort-Louis, quickly reverses and drives off. France 3 specifies that the images do not show the driver’s intent.
In one of the videos, according to France 3, a police officer can be heard shouting, while the vehicle is still stopped next to him: “come on, come closer, we’re going to give it to them right in the face” (translated). In another, a young person insults the police officers after the car has passed. France 3 does not say who this sentence comes from beyond “a police officer” (translated): the entry reports it as a remark heard, not as an established fact.
The vice-president of the Ligue des droits de l’Homme (LDH), “shocked” (translated), says that the organisation is collecting testimonies in order to refer the matter to the United Nations special rapporteurs; in her view, vehicles are not among the weapons that law enforcement may use to disperse a crowd (position of an association). A representative of the Syndicat des commissaires de police nationale (SCPN) tells France 3 that “this is clearly not the use of police vehicles” (translated) and recalls that the framework for the use of intermediate weapons is precise, while specifying that she has not seen the videos and that responsibility lies with the IGPN (police internal affairs) and the magistrates. No referral to the IGPN, no complaint and no reaction from the prefecture are reported in the France 3 article read as of 7 October.
Follow-up
On 9 October, ICI (Radio France, with a testimony gathered by France Inter) gives the floor to the man who filmed the scene, a passer-by who was with a customer in the Saint-Martin church district. He says that the young people had set up rubbish bins in the middle of the road, that there was “no mortar” (translated) and “no weapons” (translated), that they “were not violent towards the police officers” (translated), and that he saw “everyone running to get away” (translated) when the 4x4 accelerated; he posted the video on TikTok, where it has been viewed more than 200,000 times according to ICI. According to ICI, the official version is that the police officers went to clear the barrier of rubbish bins when there was no longer anyone behind it, which the images would contradict, hence the opening of a disciplinary investigation at first, followed by an investigation by the Dunkerque public prosecutor (ICI).
On the evening of 9 October, ICI Nord reports, according to the Dunkerque public prosecutor’s office, that a 14-year-old girl and her legal representative have filed a complaint: she states that the police vehicle, while reversing, hit her without her falling; examined at hospital on Monday at the end of the day, she presented a “non-serious contusion” (translated) on the hip there and left after the examination. The public prosecutor’s office specifies that the investigations are continuing: search for witnesses, use of the city’s video-surveillance footage useful for identifying the facts denounced, forensic medical examination of the victim. It recalls that an investigation had been opened for “endangering others” (translated) after the video was circulated and that a disciplinary investigation has been launched (ICI Nord).
BFMTV (via Orange, 9 October) quotes a teenage girl of the same age, on the same facts and examined the same day (the two articles do not expressly say that it is the same person): “all of a sudden, as I turned around, I saw that it was reversing towards me. It hit me on the hip and on the top of the leg. I found myself on the ground” (translated); a friend says she saw her “get knocked down” (translated), the police officer at the wheel having stopped, looked in his rear-view mirror, then “set off again at full speed” (translated) (accounts of two teenage girls, names changed by the outlet). BFMTV writes that she was “slightly injured in the leg and hip” (translated) and taken to hospital the same day, that the Nord prefecture confirmed the opening of an administrative inquiry, judging that the manoeuvre “does not correspond to the doctrines of use and orientation given by the Ministry of the Interior” (translated), and that the public prosecutor opened a preliminary investigation for “endangering the life of others” (translated) (ICI and the public prosecutor’s office press release that it cites speak of “endangering others” (translated)). The outlet also describes audio extracts “whose authenticity remains to be verified” (translated) in which police officers reportedly make provocative remarks.
What remains unknown: the condition of the other people who were on the vehicle’s path and the outcome of the investigations. Read on 9 October 2026, then on 19 October 2026: ICI (witness, complaint); France 3 (article of 7 October); BFMTV via Orange. La Voix du Nord (access denied, 403) could not be read.