02/03/2024 – 16:03
States in the South and Southeast signed a Regional Public Security Pact this Saturday, the 2nd, to combat organized crime. An integrated intelligence office will be created to share information and police officers will take courses jointly to increase integration between security forces and standardize procedures and techniques.
The pact also proposes a series of changes to tighten Brazilian legislation to combat organized crime, in addition to shared purchases of equipment, as had already been announced. The initiative was presented at the closing of the 10th edition of the South and Southeast Integration Consortium (Cosud) this Saturday.
The bills will be delivered to the presidents of the Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Senate. The governors plan to hold meetings in Brasília with their respective benches to ask for support for the proposals. Cosud is made up of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo, Rio Grande do Sul, Paraná and Santa Catarina.
The governor of São Paulo, Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicanos-SP), said that the focus of the measures is to increase the “cost of crime”. “That we can review, for example, provisional release in custody hearings, always looking at the member of the criminal organization, focusing on who produced the violent crime. We will always look for those who are repeat offenders. This will bring peace to our citizens,” he said.
One of the proposals is to expand the possible justifications for carrying out police approaches. According to Eduardo Leite (PSDB-RS), the current law allows even flagrant arrests to be reversed if the approach is not based on objective reason or intelligence data.
“What we are asking for is to provide support in legislation for the police approach that finds support in a justified manner, but for reasons of behavior, location and other issues”, said the governor of Rio Grande do Sul, adding that approaches based on prejudices regarding race, cult and sexual orientation.
“But the police officer’s perception of someone’s behavior in a given place and circumstance, which has subjective elements, needs to be understood as a motivator that underlies the police approach”, added Leite.
The governors also propose that the crime of homicide, when committed at the behest of a criminal faction, be considered qualified homicide, which has stricter rules for regime progression. In simple homicide, the prisoner can progress to the semi-open sentence after serving one-sixth of the sentence. With the proposed change, the criterion would be two-thirds of the sentence.
“Someone carrying a rifle, someone from drug trafficking or militia cannot be considered a common criminal”, said Cláudio Castro (PL-RJ). According to the governor of Rio de Janeiro, 61% of the prison population in Rio de Janeiro is part of criminal factions. “Today there is no fear of the law. It's worth being on the crime list. If you are on the street in two years, after receiving an eight-year sentence, as happened recently in Rio de Janeiro, the crime starts to pay off.”
Another change advocated is to insert the concept of “criminal habituality” to allow the decree of preventive detention, instead of provisional release, during custody hearings in cases where there is evidence that the commission of crimes is recurrent, even if there is no final conviction.
Finally, the governors demonstrated support for the end of temporary departures, a project approved by the Senate in February and which returned to the Chamber of Deputies. They also want regulation of access to electronic monitoring information.
The integrated intelligence office will be made up of employees linked to public security forces who have training in the area. The objective is to share knowledge involving organized crime. The body will be itinerant and will remain in each Cosud state for six months.
The Porto Alegre meeting also reached a consensus on the statute that will govern the consortium. At the next meeting, in Espírito Santo, the apportionment contract will be drawn up, which will establish how much each State will spend to maintain the Cosud structure.
Governors soften their tone on debt renegotiation with the federal government
The governors also toned down the tone at the press conference in relation to the complaints that were made in a closed meeting on Friday, the 1st, about the role of the Ministry of Finance in the negotiation to change the index of States' debts with the Union.
Leite, for example, stated that the tone of the debate was not to complain about the ministry of Fernando Haddad (PT), who, according to him, has demonstrated “understanding and sensitivity”. The governor also said that the dialogue has been “consistent and constant”. “Some type of discussion about a specific difficulty in evolution does not mean that the focus of the meeting was a complaint about the federal government”, stated the gaucho.
As shown by the Estadãothe governors debated the possibility of calling the Federal Supreme Court (STF), mobilizing the federal benches to approve the changes requested in the National Congress and even collectively suspending debt payment as a way of putting pressure on the federal government.
The main criticism is that discussions drag on and changes are not implemented. Leite mentioned that the issue is important even for states like São Paulo, which are able to pay the debt installments. He reported that in a conversation with Tarcísio, the São Paulo governor told him that he pays R$21 billion in debt per year, which corresponds to the construction of a São Paulo metro line.
The governors' argument is that the current regime, in which debts are adjusted according to the IPCA plus a rate of 4% per year – limited to the Selic rate, currently at 11.25% – strangles state budgets and impedes investment. in infrastructure and improving public services. The proposal is that the index becomes a fixed interest rate of 3% without monetary restatement.
The governors' expectation is that the change will take effect in 2024. Castro classified the issue as “urgent” as it would mean the survival of states with the most delicate financial situation, such as Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and Rio Grande do Sul, and the public investment capacity of others.
“What was raised by the technicians yesterday is that we have already advanced too far in the proposals. And we have reached the stage where, either we have effective measures, or month after month we continue to bleed with the installments”, said the president from Rio de Janeiro.
He said that the discussion on Friday, the 1st, was whether the States would continue to act only with the federal government or whether, as a strategy, they would go to other “arenas”, such as the National Congress and the STF. “There is nothing to complain about here [sobre o Ministério da Fazenda]. What we have is a matter of strategy so that we can have our request met. Nobody enters the game to lose”, said Cláudio Castro.
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