Thousands rally against police violence in Lausanne

Around 1,000 people demonstrated in Lausanne on Saturday afternoon, two weeks after the death of a Nigerian man in police custody. They denounced police violence and demanded justice. +Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox “The police have killed again,” said a speaker at the start of the rally outside the Montbenon courthouse. She vilified “a racist police force” and declared that “history was repeating itself”: four other black men had died in recent years as a result of police action in the canton of Vaud. + Racial profiling judgement is a historic moment in Switzerland On the police side, the Association of Lausanne Police Officers (AFPL) offered its “support” to the four officers under investigation. It said that the presumption of innocence had been “swept aside” because of the “lack of discernment and restraint in certain media and public statements”. The AFPL criticised “hasty conclusions, when the circumstances of the death are not even known yet”.