The Killing of Nahel M: Audio Enhancement and Speech Analysis

Earshot.ngo researchers have enhanced the audio of the 5 seconds before police officers shot dead a teenager named Nahel during a traffic stop in Nanterre on Tuesday the 27th June 2023. There has been a lot of speculation about what was said by the police officers before they shot Nahel point blank. This video is an effort to make available an enhanced audio signal of the event and increase the resolution of these debates.

Two phrases are clearly audible "Ouvre Ouvre" (Open, Open) and "Pousse-toi" (Move over). Both are spoken by the same police officer. Both phrases are spoken in the informal french. Informal french can be used to express familiarity or to demonstrate a lack of respect for your interlocutor. Though "Ouvre, Ouvre" could be directed at Nahel (instructing him to open his car door) "Pousse-toi" (move over) does not make sense in the context where a gun is pointed at him and the police are leaning on his car. An alternate thesis could be that the "Pousse-toi" is the gunman's address to his colleague, instructing him to move out of the way of the shot to come. This would indicate the killing was pre determined.

Earshot conducted this research in partnership with Index.ngo a fellow member of the https://investigative-commons.org/

Earshot is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to open source acoustic investigations (earshot.ngo).
Director of Investigations : Lawrence Abu Hamdan
Deputy Director: Caline Matar
Assistant Investigator: Fabio Claudio Cervi

Original file name: ‘nanterre police fuite’
Original file info: 44.1kHz, 16-bit, false stereo
Enhancement software used: iZotope RX 10
Enhancement steps:
Make audio mono as the stereo tracks on the original file are identical
High pass filter above 160Hz
De-gain (remove) bird songs
Using Izotope RX 10 algorithms we extracted samples of the noise-floor and used spectral de-noise function to filter it out.
Normalised audio (increase gain)
Export at standard 16-bit and 44.1kHz