Gallie: What do we know about this photo on the front page of English tabloids, which shows French police officers releasing immigrants?

“Yet they have done nothing”. After sinking in the English Channel on Wednesday evening, at least 27 people were killed as they tried to reach the English coast, all of them passing by the buck. Critics say the British failed to stop the French from trying to cross over, while the French criticize the British for not cooperating enough.

These diplomatic tensions continued in the English newspapers on Thursday morning. In particular you can see a photo on the first page of all the tabloids, where we see 4×4 police officers shown in French, parked on the beach and helping to launch the inflatable boat of immigrants who want to cross the canal. This can be seen in the editions of the day Metro, In The sun Entitled “Shame”, In Daily Express And you Daily Mail. In its online version, The newspaper then blames the French police patrol, but “Stand still” And do nothing “To prevent more crossroads today”, The day after the sinking. In the first edition, which was constantly updated throughout the morning, the Daily Mail Read as follows: “They haven’t done anything yet”, “They haven’t done anything yet”.

Publishing about thirty films, The Daily Mail Writes that online “Small teams of French police were spotted patrolling the beaches near Calais this morning, but dozens of people could not be prevented from leaving for England in rubber dinghies.” The scene mentioned by the newspaper can be seen in the tweet above, but it only shows a police patrol with no one else on the horizon. In this context, one might legally wonder when the photo of a police car and a migrant boat appeared on the front page of an entire English newspaper. Before the sinking that took place on Wednesday afternoon, or this Thursday morning? In fact, many elements come together on Wednesday morning, just hours before the tragedy.

Contacted, National Police say they were initially unable to date the film. “British newspapers are still in the industry for obvious reasons as far as we know. We can not say that our relations are in good shape in this regard. Colleagues take their photos every day.” Refers to the nearest source. She confirms that this is actually a French 4×4, but warns “Optical effect” In this shot, which shows the police station two meters away from the immigrants: “The car is four times bigger than the boat. So it’s more than it is in this picture.”

It does not say when or how this photo was taken. An initial answer Is brought to us by The sun, The title of which is: “Do nothing. The day before yesterday, French police noticed more than 40 immigrants going to sea in a rubber boat.” We found his photographer. Gonzalo Fuentes works for the Reuters agency and confirms he took this photo Wednesday morning while on the Dunes de la Slack beach in Wimereux, just above the town of Boulogne-sur-Mer. In addition, no other snapshot published by the British press at this time can be certified Daily Mail, The police are constantly on patrol, allowing immigrants to try to cross. In the days following the sinking, it did not exclude patrols from “letting it go” to use the expression of the British press.

When asked about this, this police source goes on to say about the intervention conditions on the north coast, where attempts to cross are being observed every day: “We’m in an identification system, which assumes people will leave. But once they get out of the water, if there are 27 people in a canoe, you can imagine children and two policemen telling them, ‘Stop … imagine, we’m blocking the boat, the passengers.’ They fall into the water and drown, it is our responsibility. The rule of any police officer is to protect human life.

There were 31,500 attempts to move to the UK and 7,800 migrants rescued in 2021 were registered by the Maritime Province last Friday. Now, 30 people have died trying to cross the channel since the beginning of the year.

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