The incursions of the Military and Civil Police in some of the favelas of Maré, having as reference the last three months of 2017, call attention for the degree of truculence and also for the lack of transparency about the reasons that lead them there. They also dramatically expose the maladministration that we are experiencing in the State of Rio de Janeiro, in all instances of administration, especially within the scope of the Public Security Secretariat.
However, regarding the historical way in which the lives of favela´s residents of Rio de Janeiro are impacted by the abuse of the police, we realize that this arbitrary form of action is not circumstantial; it´s the result of the devastation of the state government. We have the feeling that we have always been in this place of violence and authoritarianism by the security forces, in particular.
Attempts to create alternative public security experiences in the favelas, from the perspective of community policing, began in the first Brizola government in the early 1980s. In the year 2000, we still had, as a localized strategy, the installation of the first Policing Group in Special Areas (GPAE) - in the Cantagalo / Pavão-Pavãozinho slums. This strategy gained scale and increased visibility in 2008, when the Public Security Secretariat announced an initiative at Morro Dona Marta that was later called the Pacifying Police (UPP). In a broader way, both had the assumptions to bring the Military Police closer to the residents of the slums.
The UPP program, which has so far been extended to some of the favelas in the Metropolitan Region, has, in its trajectory, been questioned in several facets. The most expressive was the inability of its proponents, in general, to understand more deeply the effective right to public safety of residents of slums and other peripheries, citizens of the state who have never had this experience in their daily lives.
In fact, public managers, with the support of society's conservative forces, have never recognized this demand, considering drugs, sold in the favelas, as the main crime to be fought - transforming the lives of all residents in a hell of pain and material losses, and above all, of lives. Thus, we continue to be appalled by the increasing numbers of violence in Rio de Janeiro, particularly after the now visible failure of the UPPs.
If we look at a portion of this violence that involves armed criminal groups and police at the largest set of favelas in Rio de Janeiro - Favela da Maré - we arrive at staggering numbers: 14 police operations in the first three months of 2017 – with 16 injuries and 12 deaths. Among these, we had 11 residents and one police officer; among the injured, 14 were residents and two, police officers. As an aggravating factor, in that period, in Maré, we had seven days of conflict between two armed groups, which resulted in six deaths and three injuries.
In a distressed cry and searching other ways, I ask: until when are we going to naturalize these homicides? How long are we going to say they happened as a result of drug trafficking? How long will weapons have free arrival in slum and periphery territories? How long will we seek reasons for, in addition to those we already have, to act? Isn't it time we say: enough !? How can we accept to see so many lives abbreviated?
It’s time for other State agencies, such as the Public Ministry and the Federal Police, to assume their roles in this process. We must listen to local society and seek to build, collectively, rules of coexistence that have the defense of life as a fundamental principle. How long will we have to wait for our rights to be respected?
Eliana Sousa Silva is director of the NGO Redes da Maré
Blog do Noblat – O Globo 01/04/2017
