During an anti-drug operation in Rio de Janeiro, the police shot 28 people.
Although this was the most brutal intervention in history, it was not an isolated incident - because police violence in Brazil has structure.
In a police operation last week in Rio de Janeiro, 28 people died.
While the police are talking about self-defense, many residents say that it was about executions.
Now people are taking to the streets and calling for an end to police violence.
Rio de Janeiro / Brazil - photos of a chaotic and blood-splattered children's room and videos of how huge amounts of blood are swept away - all these terrifying images are shared on social networks under the catchphrase "Chacina de Jacarezinho" ("Jacarezinho Carnage") and show the sad outcome of a police operation in Brazil. On May 6, the police in Rio de Janeiro broke into the poor district of Jacarezinho for an anti-drug operation, killing a total of 28 people. It was the deadliest police operation Rio de Janeiro has ever seen.
The police wanted to arrest 13 men wanted with an arrest warrant. To do this, the police entered the poor district in the early hours of the morning with armored cars, helicopters and equipped with automatic weapons. According to police reports, one of the alleged drug dealers shot a police officer right at the beginning of the operation. Then the situation escalated.
In the hours that followed, around 200 police officers shot 27 people.
It is no longer possible to say with certainty whether the mission really went like this.
Statements by residents contradict what the police said.
There are indications that not all evidence was secured according to regulations after the deployment.
Many residents report regular executions, the police said they only defended themselves.
“We don't really know what happened,” says Rafael Alcadipani from the non-governmental organization “Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública”, which researches public safety in Brazil.
Brazil: Police structural violence - 1,245 dead in one year in Rio de Janeiro
Even if this anti-drug operation escalated and claimed more lives than any previous police operation in Rio de Janeiro, it is by no means an isolated incident. In 2020 alone, 1,245 people died by police officers in the Brazilian city, compared with 5,660 across the country. For comparison: the German police shot 14 people in 2019. According to the Brazilian non-governmental organization Fogo Cruzado, the police were responsible for three quarters of the major shootings in Rio de Janeiro over the past five years.
Anti-drug operations are particularly fatal. The drug war has been going on in Rio de Janeiro's slums, the favelas, for a long time. Since the cocaine trade increased in the 1980s and an ever larger number of weapons ended up in favelas, the violence during operations has escalated more and more often, and the operations often end fatally. Not all Brazilians run the same risk of being caught by the police: "Young, poor, black men are the police's favorite victims," explains Rafael Alcadipani. In fact, black men from poor neighborhoods die particularly often in police operations; last year, 86 percent of the victims of police violence were black. “We also have a police force that protects the rich,” explains Alcadipani.
Brazil's police: "badly controlled and badly paid"
He cannot explain exactly why the police operations in Brazil keep escalating like this: “Of course, the police always reflect society somewhere,” says Alcadipani.
"A violent society often also has violent police".
But a lot is going wrong in Brazil's police force.
“Our police are badly controlled and badly paid,” he says.
All too often problems are solved on the street instead of in the courtroom.
The only solution that the police know is
escalation
, especially in Rio de Janeiro
.
"The police are not at all prepared to desescalate situations," says Alcadipani.
"They came to kill", the British journalist Tom Phillips paints a rather gloomy picture of the police operation in Jacarezinho:
“Human life was worth nothing here.
It was a total massacre, a witch-hunt, a horror film I never thought I'd see in real life ”: our dispatch from #Jacarezinho after the deadliest police raid in Rio de Janeiro history https://t.co/Q4vN4new8R
- Tom Phillips (@tomphillipsin) May 11, 2021
Since the right-wing extremist President Jair Bolsonaro has been in power,
bloody police operations
have more
or
less legitimation of the highest authority: in the past, the president once said that one should "shoot criminals like cockroaches". Referring to the Jacarezinho shooting last Sunday, Bolsonaro wrote on Twitter: “When the media calls drug dealers who steal, kill and destroy families victims, it equates them with ordinary citizens who are honest and obey the law . It is an insult to the people who have long been held hostage to crime. Congratulations to the Rio de Janeiro Civil Police ”.
Vice-President Hamilton Mourão said of the 28 dead: "Most crooks".
A large number of those shot, all men between 18 and 43, actually appear to be involved in the drug trade.
But not all.
For example, there was 37-year-old Bruno Brasil, of whom his family asserts that he was a normal worker.
All of them can no longer defend themselves.
Brazil: Doubts about human rights - "a good bandit is a dead bandit"
Even if the Jacarezinho bloodbath caused horror around the world, not all Brazilians condemn these deadly police operations. The belief that “a good bandit is a dead bandit” is widespread even in the middle of society. The fact that children repeatedly die in these police operations and after death, of course, no court can prove whether the people shot were actually criminals or not, does not seem to play a role. "If this statement were true, Brazil would be the most peaceful country in the world," says Rafael Alcadipani.
Closely linked to this belief are also great doubts about the meaning of human rights: Some Brazilians feel that they are mainly protecting criminals. "The idea is that if you commit a crime, you lose your humanity," explains Alcadipani. "And thus deserve death in case of doubt, even if there is no death penalty in Brazil".
Whether the police's action was proportionate is still being investigated.
It is questionable, for example, whether the operation should have taken place at all: Brazil's highest court already banned such police operations during the pandemic last year; they should now only take place in absolutely exceptional situations.
For many Brazilians it has long been clear that such missions have to stop.
Rafael Alcadipani is calling for a nationwide police reform as soon as possible.
On May 13th, the commemoration day for the end of slavery, people took to the streets in many cities and demanded justice for those killed and the "end of the genocide of black youth".
Police violence worldwide
Countries where the most people are killed by the police and other public authorities, based on deaths per year and 10 million inhabitants:
1. Venezuela
2. El Salvador
3. Syria
4. Philippines
5. Nicaragua
6. Jamaica
7. Trinidad and Tobago
8. Brazil
9. Bahamas
10. Saint Vincent