Discrimination: four Lausanne police officers suspended
Keystone-SDA
Racist, sexist, anti-Semitic and discriminatory messages have been circulating among Lausanne police officers on WhatsApp groups. The municipality, deeply shocked, is taking action, including an initial series of suspensions.
+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
The two private WhatsApp groups had 6 and 48 members respectively. Not all of the messages have been analysed yet, but the City of Lausanne has already suspended four people. Others will follow in the next few days, said Pierre-Antoine Hildbrand, mayor in charge of the police, on Monday.
In addition to these suspensions, which could lead to dismissals, criminal investigations are underway.
The municipality also wants to carry out an “in-depth reform”. For the mayor, Grégoire Junod, “there is a problem of systemic discrimination” that needs to be addressed. André Duvillard, a former Neuchâtel police commander, has been hired to support the Lausanne authorities.
This case is “seriously damaging the image of the Lausanne police force. It’s a stain on the uniform that needs to be cleaned up”, according to Hildbrand.
What is your opinion? Join the debate:
Translated from German by DeepL/jdp
We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.
Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.
If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at english@swissinfo.ch
