The use of aircraft in police operations as a shooting platform causes us to reach a new and unacceptable level of violence, perversity and lack of respect for life by the Government.
It is not news that the security policy of the state of Rio de Janeiro is guided by violent repression. It’s a long history of failure and blood. However, we live in hyperbolic times in terms of state violence. Only in the first half of 2019, the military and civil police killed more than the number of homicides by State agents between 2010 and 2015, according to data from the ISP (Institute of Public Security): there are already 881 deaths, a staggering number for an administration that is just beginning.
This escalation in violence reaches a new level with the use of helicopters as a firing platform in police operations, in addition to authorization for public security agents to operate in slums and peripheries without respecting the legal principles that guarantee basic rights of these populations, such as entering their homes without a warrant.
The most emblematic episode of these times that broke all legal protocols, of rationality and common sense, occurred in the city of Angra dos Reis, south of the state, when in May, Governor Wilson Witzel released videos of his participation in what would be a police operation. At the time, shots fired from the helicopter in flight hit a blue canvas spread on a trail at Monte do Campo Belo - a place used for prayers. Luckily, there was no one there at the time (and if so, what would the governor say?).
Another episode, also in May, occurred when Core - an elite force of the civil police - carried out an operation in Complexo da Maré, resulting in eight deaths, three injured, two prisoners and seven rifles apprehended. Videos of residents captured the police helicopter flying at low altitude, with sounds of gunfire. Shortly afterwards, marks of the shots were recorded on the ground where the aircraft flew: only in a square of Conjunto Esperança it was possible to identify about 20 perforations.
The use of aircraft as a firing platform in Rio de Janeiro brings us to an unacceptable and unrecorded level of violence, perversity and lack of respect for life. Thus, the repression of drug trafficking occurs through “incursions” in slums and “slaughtering” of suspects, words used by the governor when referring to the way police would act when faced with young people seen with firearms.
When innocents are affected, especially the elderly, children and women, the “collateral damage” argument is appealed - something considered inevitable and admissible in combating drug trafficking in the favelas. In other words, it is acceptable that, in these territories, where the most impoverished live, certain rights can be violated or even suspended. The naturalization of this type of practice by governments in a democratic and republican society is intolerable and it is necessary to draw attention to the damage caused to those affected and to our recent democracy.
It’s important to stress that not only favela residents are exposed. Different episodes demonstrate that police life is also at risk and that they are also victims of this policy of confrontation and war. In 2009, at Morro dos Macacos, an aircraft was hit, causing the death of three policemen. In 2017, at Maré, a police officer was shot at an aircraft that was doing risky maneuvers. In 2018, in Jacarezinho, police from the UPP (Pacifying Police Unit) complained that they were almost hit by “friendly fire”. In the same year, during a low flight at Maré, a helicopter was hit in the fuel tank and had to make an emergency landing.
As for the citizens, the classic confusion related to residents of slums deepens - they are perceived as belonging to criminal networks that operate in these regions. The sad scenes of children running for cover or terrified in schools illustrate the serious loss of suspended classes, but it is even more difficult to measure the psychological damage caused to those who are frequently subjected to these situations of terror.
Public civil action
The cruelest face of this type of policy, however, is that the favela populations have historically coexisted with these truculent and rights-violating operations. A perverse routine that includes breaking and entering, home invasion, subtraction of values and electronic equipment, physical and psychological torture, private imprisonment and death threats carried out by police, which is the modus operandi in these territories, in total disparity with what happens in other regions of the city, especially the wealthiest.
A public civil action was filed in 2016 by the Public Defender's Office in Rio de Janeiro, in partnership with the NGO Redes da Maré, to bring police action into line with legal parameters, seeking to protect the rights of the population. In the judicial process, an injunction was granted to determine the elaboration of the damage and risk reduction plan, as well as the implementation of a series of measures such as the presence of cameras and GPS in vehicles and ambulances in operations.
This greater control produced significant effects: the ‘Eyes on Maré’ project, an initiative of NGO Redes da Maré, that monitors armed clashes, shows that, compared to the year before the preliminary decision, there was a reduction of 44% of lethality by firearm; decrease in the days without classes (71%) and with closed health posts (76%) due to shootings; and no police officers were killed in the actions carried out in the region.
However, this initiative suffered a major setback in the first half of 2019, as the state government simply ignored the existence of an injunction that, in the case of the favelas of Maré, had the immediate objective of minimizing the lethality and the harmful effects that police operations, historically, cause the daily life of the population. In addition, in June this year the judge responsible for the Maré Public Civil Action suspended the preliminary decisions won by the residents of Maré.
The judge's decision coupled with the governor's disdain for legal precepts in police performance has been causing an increase in operations and an explicit incentive to the use of lethal force. In the first half of 2019 alone, there were 23 police operations that resulted in 15 people killed. Almost the total of these deaths occurred in police operations with the use of helicopters, showing the damage and risks of their use as a militarized strategy for operations in slums and peripheries.
When comparing 2018 data, we realize that in the first semester of 2019 there have been seven more police operations than in the previous year. Only in the first semester of 2019, public facilities had to paralyze their activities for 10 days, almost the total of the previous year (11 days of paralyzed activities), limiting residents' access to basic rights such as education and health.
We understand that the way out of the serious security situation we are experiencing - not only in Rio de Janeiro but in other states in the country - is to recognize the populations of slums and peripheries as subjects of rights and not as enemies. A citizen security policy must prioritize the use of intelligence, investigation and prevention over violence and repression.
Unfortunately, in Rio de Janeiro, successive governments - and in particular the current Witzel administration - have been acting against this perspective, with no program to focus on the causes of violence and crime, leaving the populations even more vulnerable and aggravating the already deteriorated situation of public security in the state.
Eliana Sousa Silva
Director and founder of NGO Redes da Maré, researcher in public security and visiting professor at the Institute of Advanced Studies at USP
Daniel Lozoya
Sub-coordinator of the Center for the Defense of Human Rights of the Public Defender Office of Rio de Janeiro.
Article published on July 30th, 2019 in Nexo Jornal
