State has the police that kills the most in the country and concentrates the highest number of violent deaths
The last few weeks have been marked by violence and fear for those who live in Bahia. From the 28th of July to the 4th of August, a series of police operations on the outskirts of Salvador and in cities in the metropolitan region resulted in more than 30 deaths.
The situation reflects an increase since 2015, when the state registered 354 deaths. victims of police intervention. The apex of this scenario happened last year. According to information from the Public Security Forum, the number of deaths jumped to 1,464. The state took the lead in the ranking in this regard, surpassing Rio de Janeiro.
In addition, Bahia concentrates the highest number of violent deaths in the country since 2019. In the 1st quarter of this year, the state remained in 1st place on the list, according to data from the violence monitor on the G1 website. A total of 1,289 people died in cases of femicide, intentional homicide, robbery or bodily injury followed by death.
On July 29, 7 people died after police action in the city of Camaçari. According to the state government, the victims were part of a criminal faction. 2 days later, another police action, this time in the small town of Itatim, with 15,000 inhabitants: 8 people dead, including 3 teenagers.
On the 31st, 4 more people died in the region of Jaguarari, in Salvador. Finally, on Friday (4.Aug), 10 people were killed by the police in two different actions, both in Salvador: 5 in the Iapi neighborhood and another 5 in the Águas Claras region.
“Bahia has a long history of lethal police violence and this characteristic is related to several social, political and institutional phenomena, of which we highlight racism and the choice of police terror as a public security policy and management of socio-racial inequalities”, stated to DW Brazil Samuel Vida, professor and coordinator of the Law and Race Relations program at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA).
“We have seen a strengthening of the police command that lethality is part of their understanding of effectiveness in their public policy, which is very serious from an institutional, legal and, of course, human point of view”said Dudu Ribeiro, historian and executive coordinator of the Black Initiative for a New Drug Policy.
questioned by DW Brazilthe Secretariat for Public Security stated in a note that cases of police intervention resulting in death in Bahia decreased by 5.8% in the 1st half of 2023 and highlighted that 19 weapons were seized during the clashes. “The SSP also points out that there are constant investments in training, technology and intelligence for the state security forces, always seeking, as the main objective, the preservation of lives, as well as the legality of police actions”.
Governments bet on the confrontation
Bahia has been governed by the PT for 16 years. In almost two decades, Jacques Wagner, Rui Costa, today Chief of Staff in the Lula government, and Jerônimo Rodrigues, current governor
Samuel Vida cites a long history of government actions that, according to him, led Bahia to the crisis it is experiencing today. “Since 2007, with Wagner, the government actions in the area of public safety were led by adherence to the penal model of punitive populism, materialized, above all, in the fallacy of the ‘war on drugs’ and in the explicit orientation of police activity towards confrontation, as a political strategy”explains.
During this period, units specialized in combat and high lethality were created, such as Rondesp, Patamo, Bope and Peto. About Rui Costa, the criticism is that the former governor made no effort to install cameras in the uniforms of police officers and approved a rule determining that crimes against life committed by military police officers should be investigated by the corporation itself, excluding the civil police. investigation – the measure was declared unconstitutional by the Court of Justice of Bahia in March of this year.
“His government (Rui Costa) marks the rise of police lethality. Since then, there has been a growing transfer of police lethality to the institutional actions of the Bahian police”, said Samuel Vida.
“It is not possible to perceive differences in the speeches about public security, and also in the actions, between managers of the right and the left. The central idea remains, for both sides, an agenda that reinforces punitivism, a war on drugs that does not have the protection of life as a guide to public safety”, said historian Dudu Ribeiro.
Sociologist Vilma Reis states that left-wing governments need to present new ideas, based on the political banners that the political field defends. “We, who are in the field of human rights, cannot be held hostage to the project of the right in public security. We cannot commemorate and celebrate the horror. Our program needs to strengthen civil movements and listen to society. We do not need to follow the framework of penal populism.”
Influence of organized crime
The war on drugs discourse used by the authorities and criticized by professors and activists coexists with the presence of criminal factions in the Northeast. In January of this year, the PRF (Federal Highway Police) announced that seizures of cocaine in the state increased by almost 150% in 2022 – from 870 kilograms in 2021 to 2,160 kilograms last year.
In May, a newspaper report Folha de S.Paulo showed that a regional faction, the BDM (Bonde do Maluco), was allied with the PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital) and had turned an island in Baía de Todos os Santos into a logistics point for transporting, supplying and exporting drugs and weapons .
Other cities, especially inland, such as Jequié, Camaçari, Santo Antônio de Jesus and Simões Filho, which are among the most dangerous in Brazil, according to the Public Security Forum, are immersed in drug disputes.
“There is an intense movement of territorial disputes, both in the interior and in the capital, which imply new criminal arrangements devised through high-intensity conflagrations, with a high cost of lives, in addition to the spread of violence and fear among the most affected communities”explains Samuel Vida.
“An important characteristic of violence in Bahia is the fragmentation of regional organizations. Trafficking fueled a process of dispute over territory that was accentuated. This context, which is already violent, is made even worse by the reinforcement of the strategies proposed by the public security department, which focuses its efforts on the logic of shooting, confrontation, and not investigation”, said Dudu Ribeiro.
violence against blacks
The activist, however, points out that the speech of “war on drugs” is flawed, because it has not been able to end violence and the capillarity of organizations and, on the other hand, it has helpedhelped to increase attacks against blacks and the poor, especially the youngest.
In 2020, a study by the Black Initiative in Salvador showed that police approaches had different results according to the location. Based on data from the Secretariat of Public Security, the organization revealed that predominantly black neighborhoods
recorded 79 occurrences for use/possession of substances, while the number of intentional homicides and violence totaled 209 records.
The neighborhoods with a white majority and close to the center registered 151 cases of use/possession of narcotic substances and, at the same time, there were 33 cases of intentional homicides. In November last year, the Security Observatories Network showed that, of the 616 people killed as a result of police action in the state in 2021, 603 were black.
“This so-called war on drugs is a liberation for the use of force against the black body. This research shows that judgment on the part of the officer happens even before something is found.”said Dudu Ribeiro.
What can be done
Dudu Ribeiro, Samuel Vida and Vilma Reis converge in evaluating that the installation of cameras in police uniforms should be the 1st attitude of the Secretariat of Public Security. The state government has already said that the equipment has been acquired and promises to put it into operation by the end of the year. “Implementation is urgent, to control police activity, which has a monopoly on the use of force, to avoid abuses such as and to protect the chain of evidence in an eventual military process”, comments Dudu Ribeiro.
Vilma Reis claims that the government needs to create an External Ombudsman, not linked to the state police, to receive complaints and be a link with civil society. The measure is shared by Samuel Vida. “It is an external control of police activity that needs to be active as soon as possible”she says, who acted as General Ombudsman of the Public Defender’s Office.
They also advocate greater participation by civil society in the formulation of public policies. “It is urgent to install an emergency office that brings together government representatives, universities and civil society, especially the mothers and relatives of victims of state violence, for the formulation of policies to reorient police action in Bahia”, Samuel Vida said.
This reorientation, according to Vilma Reis, also includes investments in the area of public safety. “The Brazilian model is not one of investigation, but of confrontation. Or else it is revenge operations, as we saw in Baixada Santista”, she stated.
“This model treats the population as an enemy. The security policy must change now in the distribution of resources, since the majority of the budget is destined for weapons and ammunition acquisition. This maintains the armaments structure. We must look at police training, intelligence, investigation systems. There needs to be a remnant of democracy in that distribution.”said the sociologist.
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