Poli

What happens behind the walls of a police station? To answer this question, French journalist Valentin Gendrot decided to infiltrate the police. He did a three-month course, a training open to all those under thirty years of age, after which they are allowed to carry a regulation weapon and wear the uniform. That easy. After obtaining the title of auxiliary policeman and spending fifteen months assigned to a psychiatric hospital, he finally began to work in a police station: that of the 19th arrondissement, one of the most conflictive areas of Paris. Valentin Gendrot reveals to us every detail of what lives there: the precarious conditions in which the security forces work, the suicide of a colleague, the racism of some officers, the mistakes they make, the violence with the prisoners and the immigrants, cover-ups between policemen... Gendrot has opened a door that no one has ever crossed before and the result is Poli, a book that has shocked France.