It is enough to look at a specific point in the statistics of Public Security in Brazil to see that there is something very wrong with the treatment that Rio de Janeiro has been receiving in terms of the fight against crime. Before talking about him, however, it is good to remember the details of the operation in the community of Maré, in which the sergeant of the BOPE of the Military Police, Jorge Henrique Galdino Cruz, died last week. Police officer Rafael Wolfgramm Dias was injured by the bandits’ shots and is hospitalized in serious condition at the Federal Hospital of Bonsucesso.
There were also four dead among the “suspects” – which is the treatment that most of the press gives to criminals who, when confronted by the police authority, react with shots fired by large-caliber weapons that are or should be for the private use of the state security forces. But in Rio de Janeiro, they are always in the hands of members of the criminal factions that dominate the communities.
In the operation that began last Tuesday, in addition to six cars, two motorcycles and a large amount of drugs, the police also seized, at the end of the operation, a 12-gauge shotgun (the one that spreads buckshot everywhere when it is fired), five pistols, eleven rifles and a .30 machine gun — a weapon with enough power to shoot down helicopters. Two of the “suspects” killed were identified as bodyguards for drug kingpins hiding in the region.
According to information from the Military Police, the two agents were shot just as they were approaching the coiteiro of one of the bandits who manage drug trafficking in the region – and the violent reaction of their “security guards” indicates that “the element” was in the place at the beginning of the operation and that, under the protection of his thugs, he “escaped” before the arrival of the police. Among the more than twenty arrested at the time was a “citizen” named Ismário Wanderson Fernandes da Silva, known in the criminal world by the nickname “Bacurau”.
With
a murder conviction and several open charges against him, 34-year-old Ismário is simply one of the most dangerous criminals in Ceará. Appointed as the head of a criminal organization on the rise in the Northeast Region, he preferred to abandon the breezes of Iracema Beach, in Fortaleza, to seek the safe shelter that Rio de Janeiro communities have been offering to criminals from other states. The hitman from Ceará was one of the eleven captured in last Tuesday’s operation who left their home states for Rio de Janeiro.
Despite the tragedy of the death of an officer on duty, the operation can, from a police point of view, be considered a success – but, from its developments, one gets the impression that the police were wrong and that the criminals had every right to receive them with bullets and, moreover, to order the closure of Avenida Brasil, Linha Vermelha and Linha Amarela as a reprisal for having been disturbed in their refuge. The operation was still underway when Minister Edson Fachin, of the STF, asked Governor Cláudio Castro (PL) for clarifications on the behavior of the Military Police during the action.
Fachin spoke out not on his own initiative, but in response to requests promptly submitted by the PSOL and the Public Defender’s Office of Rio de Janeiro. The left-wing party and the public body appealed to the courts based on the Action for Non-Compliance with Fundamental Precepts (ADPF) which, since 2020, determines that the police inform in advance all the actions they intend to carry out against criminals who hide in Rio de Janeiro’s communities. Taken during the Covid-19 pandemic, the ADPF initially aimed to protect citizens living in communities, who are used as human shields by criminals, from the collateral effects of police actions.
The pandemic is long over. Life — at least as far as this public health issue is concerned — is now back to normal. But the Rio de Janeiro police are still obliged to inform in advance the steps they intend to take to pursue criminals. This generates a bureaucratic process subject to all kinds of leaks and, in practice, reduces the chances of success of any operation aimed at capturing the criminals who hide in the communities. In practice, the movement of the police comes to the attention of the bandits before the troops leave the barracks in pursuit of them and renders innocuous any action whose effectiveness depends on the “element of surprise”.
In a situation like this, criminals feel more protected in Rio de Janeiro’s communities than anywhere else in the entire country. And, according to experts in Public Security, this has attracted dangerous criminals from other states to Rio, as is the case of Ismário, from Ceará. Or, even worse, the São Paulo faction PCC which, as journalist Sidney Rezende denounced in this newspaper, has been striving to extend its dominions towards Rio. Before going into the statistical detail mentioned in the first sentence of this text, it is worth making an observation here.
This
observation is as follows: in questioning Governor Cláudio Castro for the operation, Minister Fachin acted in accordance with his convictions and fully supported by Brazilian legislation. Whether you like it or not, the decision is made and must be fulfilled. Or else repealed on the basis of the same law on which it was based. Period. It turns out, however, that the magistrate would never have made this or any other decision on the matter if someone had not provoked him and asked the Supreme Court to rule on the matter.
This is what needs to be clear: Supreme Court justices, in principle, do not act of their own volition. To make a decision they need, as they say in legal jargon, to be “provoked” by someone. In this specific case, the PSOL seems most interested in protecting the criminal factions that have become narco-terrorist organizations with international ramifications in recent years.
This far-left party acts on the problem of crime much more concerned with asserting its ideology than with protecting the rights of citizens threatened by crime. It should be clarified that, in this text, the noun “citizen” is used to refer to all the victims of violence. They can be both middle-class people who live in neighborhoods in the South Zone and who have their cars stolen by criminals all the time. Or that they lose their lives for refusing to hand over a cell phone to the criminal who assaults them. But it also and above all applies to workers who live in communities unassisted by the state and dominated by crime, who are made human shields whenever criminals find themselves under threat of a police operation.
In the name of its political objectives and the insistence on treating as enemies all those who dare to challenge its leftist ideology, the PSOL has sought to compensate for its lack of electoral support with recurrent appeals to the courts. The party is a master at fostering judicial activism, appealing to the Supreme Court against any and all actions of the State that aim to protect society from criminals. And at this point, the party reveals which side it is on when, as it did last Tuesday, it does not even wait for the conclusion of a police operation before questioning it in court.
The
statistical detail mentioned at the beginning of this text concerns the so-called “police lethality” and the number of civilians who die as a result of shots fired by military or civilian agents. Last year, a total of 6,445 civilian deaths by police were recorded in all 27 states. The number is very high, but represented a slight reduction, of only 2.3%, compared to the 2022 data.
The point, already mentioned in previous texts and to which the column draws attention again, is that one of the states that helped to pull down the statistics of this type of “violence” was precisely Rio de Janeiro. A total of 869 died by police action across the state in 2023, up from 1,330 in 2022. Meanwhile, the police in Bahia continue to be the ones that make the most fatalities in Brazil. In 2022, 1,468 people died in clashes with Bahian police officers. Last year, 1,689.
Reducing the loss of human life to the coldness of a statistic such as this, without taking into account the circumstances in which each of these deaths occurred, is an attitude that opens up space for all kinds of generalizations. And every generalization, as we know, is an open door to analyses that run the risk of being unfair. But, in the face of such eloquent figures, the omission of such a diligent party when it comes to police actions in Rio de Janeiro with regard to the deaths caused by the police in Bahia or in the state of Amapá is frightening. From a statistical point of view, the small town of Amapá has the most violent police force in the country. In 2022, it caused 129 deaths. In 2023, 186.
Left-wing politicians, however, don’t seem to care about the actions of the police in Bahia — a state that for more than 20 years has been in the hands of politicians from the PT, a party of which the PSOL is a satellite. Nor do they seem too concerned about the situation in Amapá – which, since 2010, has been governed by the PSB, the PDT and, now, Solidarity, all of which are sympathetic to the banners of the left. Against them, however, the PSOL does not act.
The inertia that makes the party ignore the threat of the police to the “vulnerable and defenseless populations” of Bahia and Amapá is evident when compared to the activism demonstrated in Rio de Janeiro. And those who pay for this are a population that sees a sensitive and delicate issue such as Public Security being treated in the light of regional interests and not having an orientation that is valid for the whole country. As long as there is no nationwide public security policy, the people of the entire country will be held hostage by criminals and opportunists who try to take advantage of this situation for their own benefit. Period.
The PSOL is the typical case of a party that, in the name of an ideology, does not move by principle, but by convenience. In time: it is not the only party with representation in the Brazilian parliament that adopts this type of stance. Unfortunately, he represents the rule, not the exception.
Generally speaking, it has been rare for politicians, whether identified with the right or the left, to prefer to maintain the coherence of their positions rather than take advantage of changes of sides. This column mentions, whenever it has the opportunity, those who were elected in the name of principles opposed to those of the PT and who did not hesitate to switch sides the moment President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva offered them a seat in his cabinet. By accepting, they did exactly the same as those who turn a blind eye to the deaths caused by the Bahian police and demand rigor against the actions of Rio de Janeiro agents: they show themselves to be more concerned with their immediate interests than with those of the population they represent.
It
has already been mentioned in previous editions of this column, more than once, that voters are fed up with violence and will demand from all candidates — starting with this year’s municipal elections — a firm stance on public safety. This was the reason that led deputies historically identified with the causes of the left to vote, in the session of May 28, against President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s veto of the project of the exitinhas. Among these parliamentarians were Maria do Rosário, who intends to be a candidate for the PT for mayor of Porto Alegre, and Tábata do Amaral, who will run for the PSB for mayor of São Paulo.
Most of the congressmen who will run for mayor in October of this year participated in that vote with their eyes set on the polls that reveal the voters’ rejection of the perks given to convicts serving their sentences in a semi-open regime. They preferred to contradict the President of the Republic rather than defy the will of the voters from whom they will ask for votes from August.
The problem is not, it must be said, that politicians make decisions that coincide with what voters want them to do. The problem consists, as has been common in Brazil, in promising one thing to the voter and, after being elected, sworn in and in possession of the prerogatives of the mandate, changing his mind and doing the opposite of what those who entrusted them with the votes wanted. Or to demand from the opponent a posture that does not match the one he himself is willing to adopt.
This
, by the way, is an interesting point. See, for example, what happened on the 5th, in the section of the “Ethics” Council of the Chamber, which evaluated the conduct of Deputy André Janones (Avante-MG). The congressman from Minas Gerais, as is known, was recorded in a speech in which he demanded part of the salaries of his aides to help him pay his expenses with electoral campaigns. However, contrary to what they do when the accused is a political opponent, the left-wing deputies did not see in Janones’ act a reason for any kind of reprimand. And they ordered the case to be shelved without him taking the slightest snub for having flattened his employees so harshly.
What happened at the meeting is a source of shame for any parliament in the world. A confusion has arisen that is in no way consistent with the expected “parliamentary decorum”. Trusting that the “leave it alone” crowd would step in to avoid any more serious consequences, Janones decided to react to the criticism he received from his opponents. Certain that his gesture would be recorded by the TV cameras, he armed himself with courage, puffed out his chest, and went after his opponent, Deputy Nikolas Ferreira (PL-MG). The two, who owe their mandates to the efficiency of the use of social networks, challenged each other to solve the issue “in the arm”, just as children did when they had disagreements during recess in the school groups of old.
Apart from the cardboard starred by the duo, what is behind this episode is precisely the differential treatment that is given to deputies caught in indefensible practices such as the crack. The act, which left-wing parliamentarians consider very serious when committed by a right-wing parliamentarian, is perfectly defensible when committed by one of his peers. And vice versa.
Think it’s over? Not at all! Last week, the same “Ethics” Council of the Chamber of Deputies ordered the filing of the case that asked for the impeachment of Deputy Glauber Braga (PSOL-RJ). On April 16, he kicked out, under the protection of the “Legislative Police”, an MBL militant who was on the premises of the Chamber of Deputies. Accustomed to demonstrations of bravery when he is in a protected environment, Braga sees nothing wrong when, with the help of “security agents” paid with the people’s money, he practices violence against a citizen in the use of his political rights. However, he is one of those who raise their voices in an attempt to put against the wall the police officers who act against the criminals who make the citizens who live in Rio’s communities as “human shields”.
As long as this type of situation exists and the people do not make good use of the vote, which is the most powerful weapon they have to act against politicians who put their goals so far ahead of the interests of society, the situation will not change. And as long as it doesn’t change, the people will continue to suffer from security and other ills.
