French police use car to push disabled man home

It's the type of scene you would imagine seeing in a comedy film.

 

But the images of two French policemen using their car to push home a man in a broken down electric wheelchair are indeed real, if slightly unbelievable.

 

In a 30-second film, a witness in another car is left giggling as she films the police vehicle slowly nudging the electric wheelchair along the road in Leucate, north of Perignan, south-western France.

 

Meanwhile, others cars zoom past in both directions.

 

The video, which was taken last month, had racked up almost 200,000 views by Monday morning after it was published on Facebook and then picked up by French media over the weekend.

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While the video may indeed have left some in fits of laughter, senior police officers took the matter seriously, launching disciplinary action against the two officers.

 

A spokesperson for the local police union saying that the actions were not only "unacceptable", but a "discredit to the entire profession".

 

The officers themselves said the man had been willing to get the push, after refusing to get out of the wheelchair when it broke down on the roadside.

But the man's family have stood up for the two officers.

 

The daughter of the disabled man told the L'Indépendant that rather than being punished, the officers should be rewarded. 

 

"My father is stubborn, he wouldn't have got off," she told the paper. 

 

"Everything these officers did was for the best, our father is safe and sound, we are totally satisfied."