“An assault rifle must be used in wars, in police operations in communities, and in slums. It is not a weapon to be used in urban areas”. Rodrigo Pimentel.
The comment highlighted above is from the public safety consultant Rodrigo Pimentel during the TV newscast RJ TV 1stedition, on June 18. It was made in a natural, rational and balanced manner and was made when analyzing the image of a military policeman with a machine gun firing into the air, but toward protesters who engaged in violent actions in front of the Legislative Assembly of Rio de Janeiro. He points out the lack of preparation of public safety professionals, drawing attention to the fact that “a bullet, just like it goes up, it comes back down and can hit anyone in a lethal way.”
The remark by the Globo Network’s current public safety commentator is extremely educational as it demonstrates adequately enough the mindset of a significant part of our society, with an emphasis on public leaders, about how public policies are idealized and put into effect from a hierarchical view of the city and its citizens. In the case of this news story, the claim that a machine gun could not be used in an urban scene of protests, but is adequate in the slums or in a war situation, illustrates how the value of life in our city will depend on the territory and the kind of people we’re talking about. After all, what defines the fundamental difference for the use of an assault rifle, when we are talking about citizens of the same city – and it is worth mentioning, in the case of slums, we have citizens whose basic right to public safety is not assured.
The need to state something so obvious is sad: that the use of heavy weaponry is not justified in protest marches or in slums, nor is the police violence characteristic of the latest protests throughout the country, and historically in the slums. However, I inquire, when was it any different from this? What was the time in our political history when we had attitudes, coming from the state powers, of respect and recognition of the people’s right to speak? When were the mechanisms and democratic means legitimized by those who govern our country? When and how were we stimulated, in our everyday lives, to exercise our right to participate?
Rodrigo Pimentel got into the Military Police of Rio de Janeiro at age 18. He worked as Captain of the Special Operations Battalion, BOPE, for 5 years and gained notoriety for his participation in the documentary “News from a Personal War” and other films linked to the slums and criminal groups. He left the police to devote himself to professional work as a public security analyst, which was made possible by the trajectory he has had as a professional in this field. And, in particular, thanks to the profound criticism in the aforementioned documentary by João Moreira Salles, to the police strategy used in the slums against drug trafficking.
What terrifies and must not be failed to be pointed out when we hear the speech by this commentator, is the fact that they are the opinions/reviews of this officer, who is considered a good parameter to understand what happens in the public safety of Rio de Janeiro. It is from views such as the one presented by Rodrigo Pimentel that wicked and stereotypical judgments about the slums and those who reside there were formed.
When I performed a doctoral research in 2009 in the field of public safety, I had the motivation to understand the practices of the military police in the slums, especially at Maré. The issues proposed therein, and many still follow me, relate in a direct way with the speech of the quoted commentator. My intention and desire as someone who grew up and had a social life in a slum was to build an interpretive framework of the everyday practices present at Maré, particularly the violent ones, that would allow me to go beyond the hegemonic representations of Rio’s and Brazil’s social world on the established violence in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. Of these, two are directly related to Pimentel’s speech: “what would be the representations, values, principles and rules that have been guiding the practices of public safety professionals when it comes to working with the poorest layers of the population in the city of Rio de Janeiro?” and “the experiences and dominant representations in state organizations, the media, and the general population, are centered on the idea that the only way to confront the criminal gangs necessarily goes through a option also sustained on violent practices?”
The seemingly balanced speech from that commentator is simply the expression of a perverse, violent and irrational logic widespread in society and forces of the State, who see civil society and the population of slums as “problems” to be eliminated and not as subjects of rights that must be recognized and respected.
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
Watch the video in which Rodrigo Pimentel talks about the use of assault rifles:
http://globotv.globo.com/rede-globo/rjtv-1a-edicao/t/edicoes/v/especialista-em-seguranca-publica-comenta-acao-de-policiais-durante-manifestacao/2640971/
