The number of people killed by police increased again in May this year in the state of São Paulo, rising from 34 to 38 compared to the same month last year. Information from the Secretariat of Public Security (SSP), published in the official diary this Monday (3), reveal that 32 people were killed by military police officers on duty, which represents 78% more than in May 2022.
Also in May, three people were killed by off-duty military police, a reduction of 75%, and three people were killed by civil police officers on duty, two more than in May 2022. In the accumulated result for the year, there were 189 people killed by police officers, an increase of 9.25% over the same period last year. Taking into account only deaths in confrontations with PMs on duty, the increase is 20%, from 108 to 130.
Related news:
SSP data also show that the total number of dead police officers adds up to 15, including civilians and military personnel, on leave or on duty, the same number from January to May last year. Considering only the month of May, this year there were six police officers killed and one last year.
For Dennis Pacheco, a researcher at the Brazilian Public Security Forum, the consecutive increases in police lethality demonstrate a notorious setback in public security management in São Paulo. “With the change of government, we observed the return of the insidious discourse promoting police lethality, whose consequences are deaths, especially of young black men, that could be avoided,” he said.
“In order to return to the democratic path of guaranteeing public security, it is necessary to assume an anti-racist commitment and reject the discourse that good police officers are murderous police officers in disagreement with the protocols and legality that professionalize their use of force, demanding action from control bodies. : the Ombudsman, Internal Affairs and the Public Prosecutor’s Office in order to reduce impunity for homicidal police officers”, evaluated Pacheco.
He points out that, in 2022, the state had an intense reduction in both lethality and police victimization, which positioned itself as a governance model for the use of police force through the Olho Vivo Program, which promoted the use of body cameras by the Military Police . “Before him [programa Olho Vivo]most of the deaths caused by the São Paulo police did not characterize confrontation, but rather an abusive use of force”, he said.
According to Pacheco, three main elements revealed the abusive use of force at that time, deaths caused by the police continued to increase even in the face of successive reductions in homicides; deaths caused by the police continued to increase without this increase being reflected in the number of police killed on or off duty; and the main target of police lethality were black, poor and peripheral adolescents from ten to 19 years of age.
The researcher believes that the program worked last year because it linked technological and political-administrative factors, uniting body cameras to state control and lethality reduction devices, such as the Non-Compliance Mitigation Commission and, mainly, discursive transformations of the leaders.
Other side
The SSP said that deaths resulting from police intervention should not be combined or equated with occurrences on duty and off duty, because they are different dynamics. “Police officers on duty are acting to protect the population, as those on duty are, in most cases, surprised by criminals, in their leisure time”, says a note from the agency.
According to the secretariat, every two months a lethality commission meets to evaluate the data, made up of representatives of the SSP, Public Prosecutor’s Office, Public Defender’s Office, Sou da Paz Institute, Center for the Study of Violence at USP and the Brazilian Public Security Forum.
“All cases are investigated by the police, forwarded to the Public Ministry and judged by the Justice. In both situations, the police officers are supported and go through the Monitoring and Support Program for the Military Police (PAAPM). There is also an analysis by the Risk Mitigation Commission, an institutional program aimed at identifying technical-operational non-conformities”, informed the secretariat.
The secretariat also argues that the main cause of death stems from the action of the suspects at the time of arrest. “In the first five months, police forces arrested 79,846 criminals, 189 of whom were killed in clashes during these arrests. Such data indicate that the use of lethal force was necessary once in every 422 arrests or apprehensions of offenders, demonstrating that the main cause of death is not police action, but the option for confrontation on the part of the offender”.
#Number #deaths #police #increases #São #Paulo