On the evening of Monday 5 October 2026, the X account of the Jeunes insoumis de la Fensch Vallée, a youth group of La France insoumise, posts a 12-second video titled “Metz, 5 October” (translated). According to this account, in it a police officer “blocks a high-school student by touching her hair and chest” (translated); it speaks of “sexual assault” and “violent repression” (translated).
The video, filmed in daylight in front of a bus shelter, shows a plainclothes man (cap, black hooded sweatshirt) sitting on the ground against the glass panel. He holds down a girl lying on her back, her legs over his, gripping her wrists at chest height; at one point his hand passes near the girl’s head. He looks around while passers-by walk in the background. Nothing in the image identifies the man as a police officer (no armband or badge visible): it is the account that presents him as such. The video, short and partly masked at the end by the hand of the person filming, does not make it possible to distinguish any act on the chest, or to know what preceded.
The same day, according to France 3 Grand Est, about 300 high-school and university students demonstrated in the centre of Metz; tear gas was fired, the glass of a bus shelter was broken and, according to a police source, 17 arrests had taken place by 4:30 p.m. No source links these elements to the scene in the video.
Follow-up
On Tuesday 6 October, the Metz public prosecutor’s office opens an investigation and refers the matter to the IGPN (police internal affairs), with the support of the Office anti-cybercriminalité, after the video went viral (Actu17, 20 Minutes); the plainclothes man is a police officer, whom the prosecutor calls a “police officer” (translated). According to the prosecutor, the girl, arrested on Monday, was placed in police custody for “damage” and “taking part in a group formed with a view to preparing violence or damage” (translated) (Actu17, citing franceinfo). Heard by the IGPN on 6 October, she rejects any act of violence and any sexual assault; her legal representative, also heard, has not filed a complaint; the police officer has filed a complaint for defamation and a police union denounces a “media lynching” (translated) (Actu17). The investigations are continuing, notably to identify who circulated the video, and “a decision will be taken on the basis of the transmission to the public prosecutor’s office of the entire investigation file” (translated).
Both versions are therefore published: the accusation made by the accounts that circulated the video, and the girl’s statement as reported by the prosecutor. The exact place (the bus shelter is not located: the coordinates are those of the centre of Metz) and the time remain unknown.