CNJ report wants restrictions on police officers and opening data to NGOs

A few weeks ago, the Citizen Police Working Group presented a report of more than 100 pages on police lethality in Rio de Janeiro. This is not just any study: the working group was created by the CNJ (National Council of Justice); the body, in turn, complied with a determination by Minister Edson Fachin, of the STF (Federal Supreme Court), in ADPF 635, known as “ADPF das Favelas”, which restricted the carrying out of police operations in the favelas of Rio during the pandemic and ended up giving way to the strengthening of drug trafficking action in the city’s hills, including the intensification of tactical training for drug dealers. Fachin established a period of one year for the group to analyze the behavior of police officers in operations with civilian deaths and suggest actions to combat them.

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The report is now in the hands of the president of the STF (and CNJ), Rosa Weber. If the conclusions presented by the commission are taken forward, the Rio police will have to make abrupt changes in a short period of time.

The group had 35 members, including judges, prosecutors, university professors and NGO representatives. The list includes six police officers (three military, two civilian and one federal). More numerous are the representatives of non-governmental organizations: there were eight. Six of them are or have already been funded by the Open Society, the foundation of billionaire George Soros and which defends the extrication and legalization of drugs: the Brazilian Public Security Forum, the Arns Commission, the Sou da Paz Institute, Amnesty International Brazil, the Coletivo Papo Reto and the New Illegalism Study Group of the Fluminense Federal University. The group was led by the prosecutor João Paulo Schoucair, who is a member of the CNJ.

The document is aggressive in its criticism of the Rio de Janeiro police. According to the report, which goes beyond technical issues and discusses ideological themes, “the operations that have historically been carried out in Rio de Janeiro are characterized by the indiscriminate use of force against the black, poor and favela-dwelling population, providing a true extermination of the black population that is disproportionately affected by these state actions”.

The main measure presented in the document is the creation of an “independent commission for the supervision of police activity”, linked to the CNJ, “with a majority of members of civil society, especially human rights organizations, favela movements and victims’ families and specialists. ”. The purpose of this new body would be to monitor, accompany and supervise the implementation of measures to reduce police lethality — exactly as bodies such as the Public Ministry of the State of Rio de Janeiro already do.

The document calls, among other things, for the full sharing of information about those killed in confrontation with the police, including the circumstances of the death and the “detailed description of the efforts undertaken by police agents to mitigate the use of force.” The report even asks for access by this new commission to the Civil Police database, which today is restricted only to the Police itself and the Public Ministry. The measure would be problematic because, in many cases, groups of victims of police actions, which would form part of the “independent commission”, have close ties with the criminal organizations that operate in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro.

The document also sets as a goal the reduction of 70% of police lethality in one year, the adoption of criteria for the installation of cameras in police uniforms (which can be harmful to public safety) and the “effective control of weapons and ammunition” by the police forces of Rio. In addition, the working group calls for the fight against “structural racism”, with the “democratization of the formulation of internal anti-racist policy” and the “implementation of affirmative actions in high-ranking staff” of high-ranking public security positions.

For the working group, police officers should shoot only when there is imminent risk to life. “Lethal force has been used indiscriminately in police operations in sensitive areas not to protect life, but to recover stolen objects, to pursue criminals and suspects, make arrests, retaliate against armed groups, repress drug sales and execute warrants. lawsuits”, says the text, in a tone of regret.

parallel reality

Although the report presents some reasonable proposals, it is based on a controversial premise: the document dismisses the idea that the high lethality of the police in Rio de Janeiro is due to the peculiar conditions of the state, which has large territories dominated by heavily armed criminals. “Fluminense authorities have reiterated for decades that police lethality occurs as an effect of the particularly violent context of Rio de Janeiro, which requires the use of lethal force by police forces with a very high frequency, in order to control crime. Such an assertion lacks support in data and evidence,” says the report.

Colonel Mário Sérgio de Brito Duarte, former Bope commander, claims that the report’s statement denies reality. “Rio de Janeiro can parade concepts that do not apply to any Brazilian state. These are clashes that last for hours, sometimes days,” he says.

For Duarte, the debate on police lethality has been based on ideological reasons: the so-called Radical Crimonology, which sees a structural violence of which the police are an arm. “Police lethality is an expression incorporated by a circle of left-wing academics in their studies on public security in sociology with the aim of triggering the surreptitious accusation against police officers that they systematically carry out extrajudicial executions of people”, he summarizes.

The colonel claims that studies on police lethality ignore that, in most cases, the “victims” were armed criminals. “The so-called police lethality only happens because there is a reaction from the criminal. Of course, exceptions need to be investigated. “The Public Ministry of the States has been very concerned with exercising its role of controlling the police”, he says, continuing: “But what we have been facing in the last 35 years in Brazil, starting from Rio de Janeiro, is even more serious. not well understood by the authorities, even those who see the reality: Brazil is experiencing a slow but progressive process of compromising its internal sovereignty due to the increasing number of so-called black spots, or territories without real state control.”

Prosecutor Diego Pessi agrees: “Police lethality, like the huge number of casualties suffered in the police ranks, is, to a large extent, the result of the criminal insurgency scenario existing in Brazil”, he says. He adds that the number of murdered police officers is high. In 2022, 142 active police officers were murdered by criminals in Brazil. “Any comparison of police lethality must take into account the reality faced by security forces and services,” says Pessi.