High number of attacks against police officers in 2023 worries experts

Summary of this report:

• Episodes of violent aggression against police officers while carrying out their duties have been increasingly frequent in Brazil. For experts, government speeches and other authorities with a mistaken concept of human rights are one of the central components of the growing picture of violence.
• Legal insecurity for police officers to react to extreme situations, along with decisions by the STF and STJ signaling greater tolerance for criminal practices, has placed the Judiciary as one of the protagonists of the current scenario.
• For specialists, the situation of violence can have harmful consequences for public security in the country, such as a reduction in the number of people entering police careers and less proactive action by the security forces.

The first days of June were marked by a series of episodes that illustrate the growing wave of violence against public security agents that has been going on for months. On the 1st, a criminal decided to confront São Paulo police officers and was successful in an attempt to remove the gun from the holster of one of the agents. The two police officers were shot a total of four times – one of the shots went through the face of one of them – and the criminal only stopped shooting because the gun magazine fell to the ground.

Days later, in Rio de Janeiro, criminals linked to drug trafficking ambushed a community in the West Zone of the capital and set fire to an armored vehicle belonging to the Military Police. The vehicle, the target of several grenades and Molotov cocktails, is the first armored vehicle popularly known as “Caveirão” to be completely destroyed in the history of the state police.

Last Saturday (10), in the central region of the capital of São Paulo, a group of about ten people surrounded a PM sergeant who had just arrested a motorcyclist who fled after an order to stop to approach (see video below). After immobilizing the boy, the agent was cornered and started to be hit by stones and bottles; he even fired shots into the air in an attempt to ward off the popular ones, without success. The criminals then approached the police officer and began to try to take his gun and remove the detained man. A pistol charger with 15 ammunition and PM’s personal items were stolen in the action. The episode of aggression only ended after the arrival of police reinforcements.

For experts heard by People’s Gazette, the explosion of cases of violence against public safety professionals, which has worsened in recent months, tends to intensify if there are no effective responses on the part of the public authorities. For the sources, the State itself is indirectly primarily responsible for encouraging the acts – in particular by decisions of the highest levels of the Judiciary that are increasingly tolerant of the commission of crimes and by speeches by highly relevant political actors with a distorted view of human rights. .

Police officer attacked by crowd after arresting biker

Legal uncertainty for police action generates serious harm to the population, say experts

In the two recent cases that took place in São Paulo, in which criminals tried to take the gun from the police, in neither did the agents fire at the aggressors, as provided for in the corporation’s operating procedure. Firearm firing can be used in extreme situations of ongoing or imminent aggression that the police officer is being targeted. In such situations, self-defense is provided for as an exclusion of unlawfulness, described in art. 23 of the Penal Code – in practice, the agent who resorted to this measure in circumstances such as those that occurred does not commit a crime.

Even so, the police officers deal with great legal insecurity to shoot even in extreme situations, since the understanding of magistrates on the use of weapons can be diverse, causing a series of responsibilities to the agents. Based on the so-called “criminal guaranteeism” – a theory that, by seeking to excessively control the State’s power to punish, creates a chaotic environment for security professionals –, positions of great tolerance towards perpetrators of criminal practices by the Brazilian Judiciary have been an increasingly reality. more and more frequent.

“Many police officers die because they hesitate. That moment is one of reaction, but the policeman thinks a million times before pulling the trigger, because he knows that the consequences for him will be extremely severe if that happens, even if he is acting in self-defense”, explains Rogério Greco, specialist in public safety and security. organized crime, postdoctoral degree in Law and current Secretary of Justice and Public Security of Minas Gerais.

Regarding the recent episodes that occurred in São Paulo, the secretary points out that this hesitation is responsible for the death or serious injuries of several of these professionals. “They don’t react for fear of being sued, losing their job or being retaliated against in a variety of ways and end up being injured or killed”, he points out.

The fear of legal retaliation even in strict compliance with self-defense has direct impacts on public safety across the country. Frequent episodes of violence against agents are one of the biggest demotivators for new entrants to the police career, making it difficult to train staff in satisfactory numbers and quality. In parallel, legal uncertainty makes police officers feel more likely to think twice before getting involved in occurrences.

“Today, when the police are faced with a situation that requires their intervention, they make millions of considerations about the consequences of what they will face if they actually intervene”, explains Fabrício Rebelo, a researcher in public safety and founder of the Research Center in Law and Security (Cepedes). “So there is a calculation he makes when faced with these situations, and the more he makes that calculation, the longer he takes to act. And cases in which the police officer ends up choosing not to intervene and be safe from the legal consequences of facing that situation also become frequent. All of this has an unquestionable impact on public safety.”

“Demonization” of police forces has to do with an ideological concept of Human Rights

The content of speeches by authorities in the country with a very ideological concept of human rights, based on the criminalization of the conduct of public security professionals and the signaling of tolerance for the commission of crimes, is another element that contributes to the increase of hostile actions and aggressive attacks against security agents.

In March, when launching the National Program for Public Security with Citizenship (Pronasci), the federal government decided to make room for various criticisms of police officers. The opening consisted of a presentation by activists with complaints against security agents. In his speech, President Lula (PT) returned to the theme, generalizing abusive behavior by police officers.

“Many times the State is only present in the periphery with the police, and it is not present to resolve, it is present many times to beat. Because often, depending on the neighborhood, you don’t ask what’s going on. They try to solve it in the most brutal way possible, and this happens in almost every periphery of the country”, said Lula. When talking about the policy of mass incarceration, defended by his party, Lula went so far as to say that offenders are often innocent and “victims of a crime”.

During the election campaign, the current president mentioned several proposals endorsed by the party at the PT’s National Human Rights Meeting, held in December 2021. Several of the measures defined at the event directly impact the fight against crime. The list of suggestions includes, for example, mass extrication, demilitarization of the police, decriminalization of drugs and an end to the “war on drugs” – a term commonly used by left-wing politicians to defend the reduction of police operations to combat drug trafficking.

The text created by the PT sector even points to the model of the Brazilian armed forces and military police as an obstacle to human rights and mentions that there is “deep incompatibility between the military police and any mockery of a democratic regime” to then defend the demilitarization of security forces.

For experts, in recent years speeches like these have reached the Judiciary with force. One of these recent examples was the decision by the Federal Supreme Court (STF) to interfere directly in the state public security policy in Rio de Janeiro and create a series of restrictions on operations. The measure, in effect since 2020, has created an unprecedented wave of expansion of drug trafficking powers.

Last year, the Superior Court of Justice (STJ) defined that approaches made by security agents – an important resource for locating drugs, weapons and other illicit items – are illegal if carried out under the allegation of suspicious behavior or even from anonymous denunciations. For the ministers, the measure aims to avoid practices that “reproduce structural prejudices rooted in society, such as racial profiling, a direct reflection of structural racism”.

Throughout his argument, the case’s rapporteur, Minister Rogerio Schietti Cruz, even mentioned an excerpt from a song by the band “O Rappa” criticizing the police’s actions. To exemplify the alleged racial selectivity of the police, he cited a video in which a black YouTuber is approached by a police officer. Although pointed out as an example of an alleged act of racism, the police officer who approaches the boy in the aforementioned video is also black.

Current scenario is difficult to resolve, say experts

“This is a political construction of many years, which has progressively caused the population to be encouraged to attack authorities. What can be seen from the decisions of the Supreme Court itself, from the political decisions in Brasilia, makes criminals feel safe in going after the authorities”, says Greco.

The secretary also points out the purely ideological criteria used by the press to report facts related to public safety. “If that cornered officer were to shoot at people who were trying to take his gun, no doubt the tone of most news would be against the officer, however much he was acting in his defense. People are already used to this kind of reasoning ”, he laments. “Nobody wants to preserve the abuse, the arbitrary act by security agents. But when the police officer is acting within the law, he has to have the full support of society and especially the State”.

In addition, Rebelo explains that public discourse with “demonization” of police forces, generically classifying them as racist and oppressive, together with the perception of perpetrators of barbaric crimes as social victims, are responsible for increasing violence in large proportions. “Faced with this ideological contamination, it becomes common that upon seeing or witnessing a police action, people immediately start taking sides with the criminal”, says the researcher.

For both experts, reversing the current situation is challenging and demands a broad cultural change. “The primordial idea to start reversing this scenario is to understand that the criminal is not a victim. As much as there are factors that contribute to his decisions, crime is his choice, and from the moment he chooses to practice it, he will be subject to the sanctions and deprivations that are the consequence of the choice he made”, declares Rebelo.