"You don't know who I am, take off the uniform then let's see", ruling out resistance to a public official

"You don't know who I am, take off your uniform then we'll see" are generic andnon-intimidating phrases. Therefore, the crime ofresistance to a public official  must be excluded for the automobile driver who, although agitated and uncooperative, pronounced them against the officers who stopped him for acheck. The Court of Cassation thus rejected the prosecution's appeal, which challenged the acquittal of the defendant with the formula"because the fact does not exist", decided by the Court, following the abridged trial. The public prosecutor had unsuccessfully pointed out that the trial judge had not given due weight to the conduct of the motorist who, as shown by the note of thecourt police, during the checks he had been subjected to, had 'behaved in a violent and threatening manner, certainly capable of concretely endangering the protected legal asset'.

The public prosecutor asked to highlight certain circumstances: 'As soon as he got out of the car, he was surly, looking for a physical confrontation with the officers, and with his arms flailing and flailing towards the operators', trying to escape in order to evade control, and in a high tone of voice uttering the phrases "you don't know who you are dealing with" and "you don't know who I am" or "take off your uniform and let's see". Also demonstrating the agitated state was the fact that 'during the search he became so agitated that he dropped some coins he had in his trouser pocket to the floor'.

For the Supreme Court, however, it is a reconstruction that, despite its sharpness, contains no reference toviolent actions against the officers. True for the judges of legitimacy is that the defendant was agitated, but not against the police officers, without having any physical contact with them. And even the phrases said - the Supreme Court specifies - were considered, correctly, in the appealed sentence 'entirely generic and lacking any actual threatening content or integrating vulgar insults against the officers and the Police in general'.

Intemperance, therefore, is not sufficient to trigger the offence of resistance, for which it is necessary to distinguish 'the agent's active conduct - in which he employs force to neutralise the performance of the act and evade capture, e.g. in the event of arrest - from mere passive opposition to the performance of the public official's act'. Behaviour of non-cooperation and without violent acts is therefore not sufficient for conviction.