Early reports suggested that the three men dressed up in fake police uniforms and conspired with a director and cameraman to film a contrived incident in which the three pretended to arrest a black African man in front of a supermarket. The scene was set up to show a white thief stealing products and being let go while the black man was targeted simply due to the color of his skin.
Investigators who arrested these three impostors say that the uniforms they had on were real, and were connected to a Paris police officer who is believed to have lent the garments to them as part of this staged smear effort.
"Some malicious people try to use this drama to bring the French national police into disrepute," stated Loïc Walder, a delegate from the UNSA Police union who oversees the 3rd district. Walter responded negatively to video footage of the fake incident.
"It is really important to be extra vigilant about content we view online," Walder added in a statement.
Walder went on, however, to falsely accuse American police of engaging in this type of discrimination, and made a point of differentiating how French police supposedly behave.
"The national police exercise their profession with professionalism, seriousness, and discernment," Walder stated. "The rare abuses are systematically punished."
When approached about this deception by the fact-checking website Check News, which is run by the left-wing newspaper Liberation, the director of the film tried to say that it was designed to pay "tribute" to George Floyd rather than intentionally deceive the public about acts of discrimination by police.
"The goal is to send a message of peace," the 22-year-old hilariously claimed following his arrest.
The idea, this same individual added, was hatched as part of an alleged attempt to portray an "original" scenario similar to the one that supposedly occurred with George Floyd. It even went so far as to have the fake white police officer drop a knee on the fake black thief's neck – so original.
At the last minute, one of the men involved in the film suggested that they change the scenario even more to depict a black man being falsely accused and arrested for the crimes committed by a white man. None of these scenes were ever filmed, however, because real police caught up with what was going on and put an immediate stop to it.
"When the police arrived, they didn't want to know anything, and they didn't let us explain," one of the film's creators whined. "One of the extras also expressed himself poorly: when a police officer asked him to explain what the video was, he replied that it was a racist video."
The group of men staging this whole thing then tried to claim to real police officers that the film was supposed to be "a tribute to George Floyd." But "they didn't want to hear us," one of the men explained, disappointed that he was unable to get away with it.
Not long after these men were arrested, the city of Paris erupted into riots of its own with protesters swarming the streets in "solidarity" with George Floyd and the black people he apparently represents. People also marched in remembrance of Adama Traoré, a black man who is said to have died in French police custody back in 2016.
To keep up with the latest news about BLM and Antifa hoaxes designed to make police look bad, be sure to check out Hoax.news.
Sources for this article include: