The inspector of the Military Police of São Paulo is campaigning against Guilherme Boulos, the PSOL’s pre-candidate for mayor: “Not him”. For the corporation, it is not a serious mistake: the message was shared on a “temporary basis” and on the officer’s “private” profile.
The pre-candidate for vice president on the current mayor’s ticket, supported by the governor and Jair Bolsonaro, is a colonel in the PM.
Students on a soldier’s course in São Paulo praise the Carandiru massacre that resulted in the death of 111 prisoners in 1992 and are being investigated by the PM’s inspector general. “There was only trash there,” the uninhibited newcomers chant decades later on social media, “mutilated bodies and severed heads,” a song that is part of the informal school curriculum.
In 2006, the late Colonel Ubiratan, commander of the massacre, also celebrated his “acquittal” (after being sentenced to 632 years in prison) at the PM barracks, which, in celebration, exclaimed “hip hurrah”, “hip hurrah”.
Based on “technical criteria”, the governor of São Paulo (who is not bothered by the elimination of suspects) appointed a reserve officer accused of beating prisoners who had been surrendered during the sweep of cells carried out after the Carandiru massacre to the Penitentiary Administration’s advisory board.
A bill that grants amnesty to those involved in the massacre, authored by Captain Augusto (PL/SP), who boasts of being the first parliamentarian to wear a PM uniform in the Chamber of Deputies, has a favorable opinion from Corporal Gilberto Silva (PL-PB), also from the PM, in the Constitution and Justice Committee.
The governor of Rio de Janeiro (who is not bothered by the elimination of suspects) wants the racist and arbitrary approach to young black children of diplomats, caught on security cameras, to be investigated “seriously”, but without failing to express his sympathy and understanding: “It is difficult for the police to know who is the son of a rich person.”
One of the soldiers involved in the approach said in his testimony (in the protective presence of a PM officer and an agent from the Internal Affairs Department) that he was looking for a suspicious group that had “similarities” to the group of young people who were innocently walking through Ipanema.
It is common for military police to hide and plant evidence (weapons, drugs, “witnesses”), and the police officers do not remove police officers who shoot and abuse people.
Still in Rio, the perpetrators of the death of 14-year-old João Pedro were acquitted on the grounds of “self-defense”. A judicial license to kill, as long as it was “unintentional”.
There is a small reduction compared to the previous year (0.9%), but in 2023 the number of deaths due to police interventions in Brazil will be 6,393, around 17 per day. Since 2013, the growth has been 189%, according to the Brazilian Public Security Yearbook.
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The killings are not politically motivated. The police in Bahia, a state governed by the Workers’ Party since 2007, are the ones that kill the most, 1,467 in absolute numbers. For the governor of Bahia (who is not bothered by the elimination of suspects), the security forces there act firmly and legally. The police in Rio de Janeiro remain in second place.
Every day more powerful and influential, the PM is one of Brazil’s political calamities, apparently insoluble.
Only zero tolerance can make a difference. There are no good or bad police officers. There are police officers who border on the world of crime, because they are certain of impunity, and there are police officers who border on the world of law, out of modesty, virtue or fear. Due to the lack of control, the line is narrow.
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