“We Are in State of War” With Armed Criminals, Says Leader of Bolsonaro’s Party

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Known for his hard-line speech in the area of public safety, Senator Major Olímpio (PSL-SP), senator and leader of Jair Bolsonaro’s party PSL, says the increase in police lethality in the country is owed to the “criminals’ lack of limits,” but that this is not related to the declining number of murders in the country, which dropped ten percent last year.

“More criminals are dying because there is no limit to the boldness of offenders. They are firing more at the police, and as a result, the police are fighting back and firing more too,” says the senator.

“The guys are blowing up ATMs, bank transfer cars, cash company headquarters, and they endure the shootout against the police force as long as it takes. Logically, in this war-like clash, you get more dead criminals.”

Data released by the Brazilian Public Safety Forum show that the number of violent deaths in the country fell in 2018 to 57,341 murders, the lowest level since 2014.

Simultaneously, the number of people killed by the police totaled 6,220, an increase of 20 percent over the previous year: “I don’t see cause and effect in this,” says Major Olímpio. “I see more criminals being killed because they are engaging in greater clashes with the police forces.”

The senator credits the reduction in the number of deaths to the work done to dismantle criminal factions, relocating their leaders to federal prisons.

Known for controversial statements (he’s already made a joke about the prison massacres, for instance), Major Olímpio says the police must be hard, because “we’re in a state of war, and often wanting to use instruments of peace,” but that they must also operate within the law.

“Against violent criminals, murderers, burglars, you need to uphold the strictness of the law. But not break the law. If the law is fragile, you amplify its punitive potential, you build public safety bodies. But we always have to act according to the law. A safety system that is not supported by the law is unthinkable. Then you go back to the principles of humanity, to savagery, to the eye for an eye, the lex talionis. And those things are inconceivable in an organized society.”

The senator celebrates the positive data of declining deaths, but says that we are still “very far from an ideal minimum plan,” he says. “We are still living an immense scourge. Brazil accounts for 13 percent of the world’s homicides.”

The senator also points out that the number of deaths may be higher. The Forum says that the country reported 82,094 missing persons in 2018. “People who were possibly executed, clandestinely buried, that we have counted as missing and not as murders or homicides,” he says.

There is also an issue with data patterning, he says. “If you are on the street now, you are shot, you go to the emergency room and die after 15 days in the hospital, this is considered bodily injury.”