The party on Carnival Tuesday in 2022 ended with three residents killed at dawn by police shots in a poor fishing neighborhood in Salvador de Bahía that, with its colorful houses, is one of the most photographed sights in the city.
The first police version followed the typical pattern of the war on drugs: after an anonymous call alerting about armed men, the agents entered the Gamboa neighborhood, the criminals resisted, they were shot and, in the confrontation, three young men they are shot dead.
Two years later, three military police officers are being prosecuted for the qualified homicide of the three neighbors and for procedural fraud.
Gamboa's case is an emblematic case of police violence in Brazil because the Prosecutor's Office maintains that the agents acted as the victims' families so often denounce: they killed them in cold blood,
planted
weapons on them, manipulated the crime scene and threatened the victims. witnesses.
That night, Silvana dos Santos, 43, had one of her eight children taken from her.
“They took them to an abandoned house.
I went there and introduced myself as the mother of one of them, I didn't say which one.
My son was still alive.
I know it because I heard it.
[The police] pointed a gun at my head.
I screamed a lot but I left.
They were executed.
If I had insisted, perhaps I would be another victim and I would not be here telling the story,” she says between sobs.
The radical turn of the case, known as the Gamboa massacre, is very unusual in Brazil, a country where in 2022 more than 6,400 people - suspects or bystanders - died in police operations, according to the latest data from the Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública.
That means that 13% of violent deaths are the work of uniformed officers.
Bahia, whose capital is Salvador, took over from Rio de Janeiro a few months ago as the State where the police are most lethal;
agents are responsible for one in four violent deaths in that region.
Across Brazil, the victims are almost always young black men.
The few cases of police violence that go to trial drag on for years and usually suffer multiple ups and downs to end in the acquittal of the police officers or light sentences.
Just a few days ago, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights condemned Brazil for Operation Castelinho, in 2002, in which the police killed 12 alleged members of the First Capital Command (PCC) who were on a bus in São Paulo.
They fired more than 700 bullets.
Over the years, the PCC has become the most powerful criminal group in Brazil.
The US has just sanctioned one of its money launderers.
Back in Salvador de Bahía that carnival night, the Gamboa neighborhood mobilized immediately after the deadly police raid.
When it was already dawn, they cut a large adjacent avenue.
With traffic disrupted, the protest made the news.
While the head of the Military Police spread the official version in a television interview, a group of women from Gamboa blocked the cars and proclaimed that the police came in shooting left and right.
They demanded peace and justice.
Among them, the aforementioned Mrs. Dos Santos, the mother of Alexandre Santos dos Reis, 20 years old.
Brave woman, she tearfully questioned the police version while she held the microphone tightly in front of the camera.
Alexandre was one of her middle children.
“Wonderful, he respected me, treated me like a mother, helped me,” she says.
Already that day she appealed on television to divine justice.
“I trust more in my god, who is just and faithful, than in the justice of men,” she says.
“The other mothers are afraid, I'm not.
If I keep quiet, the next one could be another of my sons or my grandchildren.”
She demands justice and reparation: for example, a job.
The police took the lives of his son Alexandre, from Cleverson Guimarães Cruz, 22 years old, and a minor, Patrick Sousa Sapucaia, 16.
The Prosecutor's indictment details that on March 1, 2022, the three neighbors were partying in Gamboa when the police opened fire.
Two are hit by gunfire and, along with the third, are taken by the agents to an abandoned house.
The forensic evidence shows submachine gun shots in the chests of all three.
Afterwards, the uniformed officers clean up the blood (and in the process destroy evidence) “using a broom and a bucket of water” confiscated from a neighbor in order to “exempt themselves from responsibility in the criminal process.”
In an also common move, “pretending that they were alive, [the police] took them to the hospital,” where upon entering they certified the deaths.
The document adds that
they planted
a pistol and a revolver on the victims to support the thesis of confrontation and "to avail themselves of the exclusion of illegality of legitimate defense."
The weapons placed there were rusty and useless and tests indicated that none of the victims had traces of gunpowder on their hands.
Lawyer Wagner Moreira, 38, coordinator of Ideas Assesoria Popular, a civil society organization, joined the case to help the residents of Gamboa spread the counternarrative against the official version, defend their rights and pressure the competent authorities.
During the first year, there was no progress, but there were some intimidating visits to the neighborhood by the police involved.
Moreira highlights, in an interview, the courage of the families and neighbors.
With that support, he and his team managed to get prosecutors specialized in public security (grouped in the Geosp) to focus on the Gamboa case and investigate it thoroughly.
They carried out technical tests and a reconstruction.
An internal affairs commission of the Military Police “came to the conclusion that there were strong indications of execution and that
weapons
were planted on them,” recalls the Ideas coordinator.
He adds that, however, another commission from the same police force concluded that “there was no crime or irregularities” on the part of the agents.
The thesis that the families defended from the beginning prevailed.
Two police officers enter the Amaralina neighborhood in Salvador de Bahía, after receiving a report of shots fired in the area. Lunae Parracho (Reuters)
For this reason, three military police officers will sit in the dock for the murder of the trio of neighbors.
In addition, the agents, along with a fourth police officer who was driving the patrol, will be tried before a military court for manipulating the scene of the case.
The first hearing, scheduled for Wednesday of this week, has been postponed to May, according to Mrs. Dos Santos.
The Prosecutor's Office emphasizes that the triple crime was a consequence of the low value given to the lives of young black people from favelas and neighborhoods.
“It was committed for a nefarious motive, because the police assumed that all the victims were criminals and that they could react to the offensive to kill them given the devaluation of their lives, even without there being any armed reaction or resistance.”
Reflecting that police lethality does not understand political colors, Rio de Janeiro, which had the record of police violence, has for years had governments allied with the far-right Jair Bolsonaro.
In Bahia, on the other hand, the Workers' Party of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has governed for 16 years.
Moreira, from Ideas Assesoria Popular, maintains that “the premise of the left that, by reducing poverty and with a better distribution of income, violence would decrease has proven to be unsuccessful.”
He criticizes “the denialism of the data” of the state authorities and their failure to commit to an alternative public security policy.
He adds that putting the police officers on the bench “is a victory of a first battle, but nothing ensures that they will be held accountable.”
He recalls another emblematic case from Salvador de Bahía, the Cabula massacre, with 12 murdered, whose judicial process has been reactivated after nine years, a summary acquittal and the annulment of a trial.
The lawyer and activist criticizes the fact that the Military Police of Bahia invests a fortune in facial recognition - the star public security measure in the recent Carnival - but not in cameras in uniforms, which are cheaper and have proven effective in other corners of the country. Brazil.
The police patrol the streets of the Amaralina neighborhood to prevent robberies, which are very frequent in the area of Salvador de Bahía (Brazil). Lunae Parracho (Reuters)
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