Rio extinguishes agency that investigates misconduct and violence of State Police officers

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Maicon was two years old when military police killed him. It was April 15, 1996, and he was playing in front of his house in Acari, in the northern part of Rio de Janeiro, when he was shot in the face. The crime was registered as “auto de resistência” – a term used by police officers who claim to be defending themselves by killing someone: “But how can a two-year-old boy exchange shots with the police?”, rightly asks José Luiz Faria da Silva, Maicon’s father.

As he does every year, José Luiz protested, once again, against injustice. Years ago, the case was closed, and nobody was punished. He questions: “The Public Ministry has the power to investigate, but they haven’t done anything until today. So what does the MP mean? If they don’t do their job? I think that the biggest responsible for the deaths not being investigated is the Public Ministry.

One of the functions of the Public Prosecutor’s Office is the external control of police activity. But in reality, only a tiny portion of the crimes committed by State Police are investigated and turned into accusations. And this can get worse. The Public Prosecutor’s Office of Rio de Janeiro state abolished GAESP, the Specialized Task Force for Public Security, on the 10th of this month.

The prosecutorisl group had among its functions “to act in the area of public security in a broad sense, both with regard to the formulation and implementation of public policies related to it and about the external control of police activity.” GAESP was created in 2015 and had in its structure a coordinator, a sub-coordinator, and an exclusive assistant, plus 12 auxiliary prosecutors – not counting the four advisors, three secretaries, interns, a coroner’s expert by the Civil Police, etc.

“It is a real absurdity and regression,” says one prosecutor, who prefers not to be identified for fear of retaliation. “It is impossible for a PIP (Police Inquest Prosecutor), who has an average of 1,000 investigations a month, to stop to investigate killings committed by police officers,” he said. He refers to the creation of the General Public Safety Coordination, trumpeted in the press as if it were a body that would substitute the work of GAESP, but which, in fact, does not have this function. Resolution No. 2,409, dated April 12, 2021, says that “the General Public Safety Coordination Office is forbidden to exercise any activity of an enforcement agency.”

EL PAÍS asked the Public Prosecutor’s Office whether, with the extinction of GAESP, the General Coordinator of Public Security would do the work previously done by the group’s prosecutors. The body’s advisory office replied that the coordinator was not created to replace the old structure, “but to improve the institution’s performance in the external control of police activity and contribute to public policies in the area.” “The General Public Safety Coordinator will work on planning, support for the formulation of new institutional strategies, integration and the necessary support for the activities of the natural prosecutors in the area,” says the text.

In the past, when a complex case, such as “autos de resistência” (resisting arrest), reached a prosecutor, he could send it to GAESP, which had a structured group to work on the case. “It ends up being difficult to stop everything to give priority to this. The cases of robbery, drug trafficking, and association come pretty easily to be denounced,” explains a prosecutor who preferred to remain anonymous.

“I stayed in PIP, and I know that you can’t investigate. The police don’t listen to the victims’ relatives, or they listen in a bad way, with biased statements. Many times the victim is afraid to go to the police station to testify. Then there is no way. You have to redo everything,” she says, reporting that a PIP prosecutor works with the inquiry that comes ready from the police station. “PIP’s daily routine has thousands of inquiries about robbery, trafficking, etc. And the investigation of death by police officer can’t be like that. It needs a dedicated work of the prosecutor. There is no way to do this daily.”

Despite having the work still limited, especially given the volume of work, it is a basic account: several prosecutors process more work than one prosecutor alone. The end of GAESP means the end of the priority of investigating police misconduct -which wasn’t so much anymore.

“Between you and me? This was never a priority of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, but, symbolically, the end of GAESP represents the weakening of the external control of police activity, a constitutional function,” says a judge who preferred anonymity. For him, this special body was created to say that they would do something in this area, but in practice, little was done. And in fact.

An analysis of the costs of police violence in Rio de Janeiro, made by the international organization Human Rights Watch (HRW), showed that one-fifth of all homicides recorded in the capital of Rio de Janeiro in 2015 were committed by uniformed police officers. Three-quarters of those killed were black. At the time, the MP-RJ filed charges against only four – or 0.1% – of the 3,441 cases of homicides committed by police registered between 2010 and 2015. HRW said that the MP weakens police oversight and calls for the Group to be reinstated or another team set up.

“Particularly, I think the MP overseeing the police brings structural change. He would be able to determine improvements in the internal affairs offices, under penalty of the chiefs being held accountable,” points out Reserve Major Luiz Alexandre, former chief of an internal affairs office (military judicial police precinct) and with a master’s degree in law. In his opinion, Gaesp investigates famous crimes on a drop-by-drop basis, “changes nothing in the structure and consumes many resources,” and that the ideal would be for the group to pressure the internal affairs units to work better.

Police Lethality in the Favelas

All this is happening in the middle of the Public Hearing on police lethality in Rio de Janeiro, which began on Friday, April 16, and ends on Monday, April 19. Convened by the Supreme Court, the hearing takes place in the context of the lawsuit known as ADPF of the Favelas, a claim filed after the disastrous police operation carried out by the Civil and Federal Police in São Gonçalo, where they killed teenager João Pedro at home May 2020.

The hearing also took into account the shootings in the middle of the distribution of food baskets in Rio’s favelas, and that left 5 dead and 2 wounded, according to data from the Fogo Cruzado Institute.

Maicon’s father was one of the first to speak at the Public Hearing on Friday at 8:30 AM. “How would you feel with a two-year-old son in a police car? How would you live with this penumbra that your son was killed exchanging gunfire at the age of two when he was playing?” On the screen of the online session was a picture of the boy and the case file. The idea of the Supreme Court is to collect “information that will subsidize the State of Rio de Janeiro in the elaboration of the plan to reduce police lethality.” But with the Public Ministry weakening the mechanisms to control police misconduct, this will not be possible.