On 10/05/1988, we celebrated the enactment of our Constitution, known as the “Citizen Constitution” and considered one of the most advanced in the world regarding fundamental rights and guarantees. Two years later, on 7/26/1990, we mourned the death of 11 young people, 7 of them minors, from the Acari favela. They were kidnapped from a farmhouse in Magé and murdered by a group of police officers. The bodies were never found, the case expired under the statute of limitations in 2010, and no one was held accountable for the crimes.
That was the beginning of a long list of massacres in the Rio metropolitan area, perpetrated by (off-duty) state agents or authorized by the state (the so-called police operations), with thousands of lives brutally taken by civil and military police forces. It's true that many police officers died, but they killed far more than they lost. In 2021, that ratio was 1 police officer killed for every 21 civilian victims.
Source: https://wikifavelas.com.br/index.php?title=Chacinas_no_Rio_de_Janeiro
Image description: The image is a family-tree-style diagram representing "Major massacres in the Metropolitan Region of Rio de Janeiro." The spatial layout runs from left to right, starting with dates from the early 1990s through the late 2020s. The blue boxes contain the names of the massacres, such as "Salgueiro Massacre," "Jacarezinho Massacre," and "Maré Massacre." Lines connect these boxes, indicating the relationships between the massacres.According to the report Chacinas Policiais, produced by GENI/UFF - 2022, between 2007 and 2021, 17,929 police operations were carried out in favelas in the Rio metropolitan region, of which 593 ended in massacres, with 2,374 dead.
And what does our "Citizen's Constitution" say? Its Article 5 states that everyone is equal before the law, guaranteeing the inviolability of the right to life, liberty, equality, security, and property. It determines that no one shall be subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment; that privacy, private life, honor, and image are inviolable; and that the home is the inviolable asylum of the individual, which no one may enter without the resident's consent;
Image description: The image is a photograph of three police officers carrying a body. The scene takes place on a street with sidewalks on either side. The officers have their backs to the viewer, walking toward the left side of the image. The text in the image mentions that in 2021, 1,356 people were killed by civil and military police officers in the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan region, and that 64 police officers died in the line of duty. The "RIO MEMÓRIAS" logo is located in the lower right corner of the image.But on 07/21/2022, 32 years after the Acari Massacre and perhaps for the thousandth time in Rio's history[1], all of these constitutional provisions were disregarded in yet another police operation in Morro do Alemão. According to the Deutsche Welle news network:
“...Residents of the favela accused police officers of attacking civilians and invading homes, carrying out police raids and taking personal belongings amid intense gunfire.
...
After the operation, residents were seen gathering injured people in the back of vehicles to take them to the hospital, while the police watched. Gilberto Santiago Lopes, from Anacrim, said that the police refused to help. "We had to carry them in a drinks cart and then ask a local resident to take them to the hospital in his car," he said. "[The police] don't aim to arrest them, they aim to kill them, so if they're injured, they think they don't deserve help.[2]
The death penalty is explicitly prohibited under item XLVII of Art. 5[3]. The maximum prison sentence is 40 years, following due legal process which, in general, takes many years, goes through several instances, and judges, lawyers, and juries pore over the case files at length before deciding.
But on 07/21/2022, the death penalty, forbidden by the Brazilian constitution, was applied 18 times in Complexo do Alemão. 400 heavily armed civil and military police officers, backed by helicopters, invaded the Complexo shooting to kill. And they killed — they killed 18 people and 1 police officer.
According to the police, of the 19 dead, 9 had “criminal records,” 5 were “suspects” with no records, and 3 were not suspects.
The constitution prohibits ad hoc courts or tribunals and establishes that no one shall be prosecuted or sentenced except by a competent authority, nor shall be deprived of liberty without due process of law; the accused are guaranteed the right to adversarial proceedings and full defense, and it guarantees that no one shall be considered guilty until the final and unappealable criminal conviction[1].
But on 07/21/2022, what we saw was disrespect for the constitution and the violation of human rights. Everyone was sentenced by unauthorized authorities, without the right to a fair hearing or a full defense; there was no final criminal conviction because there was not even a trial. The death penalty was summarily applied by armed police officers to people in a situation of risk and great vulnerability.
There is an exception provided in the constitution for the death penalty, in case of war[2].
So we are at war. But the aggression is not foreign, the enemies are on national territory. It is a fratricidal war in which the State kills those it should protect and lets its own agents die.
In 2021, police killed 1,356 people in the Rio metropolitan region[3], a 9% increase over 2020, and 64 police officers died in the line of duty, a 45% increase over 2020.
Image description: The image is a color photograph showing an urban scene with several people. On the left side, a man is wearing blue shorts and holding a cell phone. Beside him, another person is wearing a white shirt and beige pants. Further to the right, two men are interacting, one of them carrying a green bag over his shoulder. In the background, more people can be seen walking, along with a building with a white-painted façade. At the top of the image, there is text in Portuguese mentioning police operations in favelas in Rio de Janeiro between 2007 and 2021.A frightening outcome, contrary to what was intended, with an escalation of deaths, increased drug trafficking, weapons, and violence. An ineffective drug-combat policy that runs counter to fundamental rights.
According to the civil police spokesperson, the operation targeted a vehicle theft gang. During the press conference, the operational deputy secretary, Ronaldo Oliveira, said he would have preferred that "they hadn't resisted" and that the police had "arrested the 15 or 14."[4]
Is invading a favela and killing 18 people really the best way to combat vehicle theft? Look at the result of the operation:
4 arrestedseizures: .50 caliber machine gun (capable of taking down a helicopter), 4 rifles, 2 pistols and 48 motorcycles400 police officers from the Military Police's BOPE and the Civil Police's CORE
4 helicopters and 10 armored vehicles used in the operation[1]
Meager result: 4 arrested, 7 weapons and 48 motorcycles seized. Absolute disaster not mentioned: 19 dead, 18 civilians and 1 soldier.
Beyond being costly and ineffective — if massacres actually worked, Rio would be a model city — it is absurdly racist, and the numbers are stark:
In 2021, of the 1,356 deaths caused by police actions: 99% of the victims were men, 84% Black, and 74% under 30 years old. Any doubt about the target?
We need to rethink our political choices, our targets. While there's debate over whether a white man, convicted of a white-collar crime, should go to prison after the second-instance ruling or only after a final, unappealable conviction, thousands of young Black people are killed without any legal process. We hand over the decision to apply a punishment that isn't even provided for in the constitution to a poorly trained police officer, badly paid, who receives no proper training, often under complex psychological conditions.
It's necessary to change, radically change the security policy. It's necessary to stop, stop killing our young Black people. If not, where will we end up?
