{"id":21966,"date":"2015-05-12T09:00:58","date_gmt":"2015-05-12T12:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=21966"},"modified":"2015-05-19T14:50:17","modified_gmt":"2015-05-19T17:50:17","slug":"public-hearing-in-alemao-investigates-police-brutality-in-the-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=21966","title":{"rendered":"Public Hearing in Alem\u00e3o Investigates Police Brutality in the Community"},"content":{"rendered":"

A public hearing<\/a> conducted to investigate human rights violations in Complexo do Alem\u00e3o<\/a> took place on Monday May 4 in the community’s\u00a0Caic The\u00f3philo de Souza Pinto School. The meeting was organized by Brazil\u2019s Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI) after the first three months of 2015 in Alem\u00e3o\u00a0were filled with\u00a0violent murders by the police<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The school where the meeting took place\u00a0is currently used as a Pacifying Police Unit<\/a> (UPP) base while the official police building is renovated.\u00a0A\u00a0few days after the event, the UPP coordinating body announced it will remove the\u00a0base<\/a> from the\u00a0school.<\/p>\n

Vestiges of shootouts between police and gangs can be seen on the school building: the main wall is covered in bullet holes. The removal of the UPP base, slated for some time this month, was one of the many demands from community leaders at Monday\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n

More than 200 people attended the meeting, which was the first CPI meeting to be held outside of Brasilia. The CPI, the\u00a0Human Rights and Education Commission of the Legislative Assembly of Rio de Janeiro (Alerj) and 17 community associations collaborated in organizing the event, which brought forth heated discussions about the recent spike in police violence in the community<\/a>.\u00a0The objective of the event, according to organizers, was\u00a0to generate concrete ideas for change and for the event to allow a space where favela voices could be \u201cheard and respected.\u201d However, some residents left the event disappointed as only four favela residents from the audience were allowed time to speak at the end of the 3-hour event.<\/p>\n

Representatives from the State Legislative Assembly\u2019s Human Rights Commission, the Military Police, the State Education Department, and the State Social Assistance and Human Rights Department sat in the 12-member panel. The panel also included three community residents chosen by Alem\u00e3o activist leaders.<\/p>\n

\"Alan<\/a><\/p>\n

The event ran for more than three hours. Each member of the panel was allowed time to speak in a discussion moderated by the\u00a0state congressman heading Rio’s Human Rights Commission,\u00a0Marcelo Freixo.<\/p>\n

Denize Moraes, mother of a young mototaxi driver allegedly killed by the Military Police<\/a>, kicked off the discussion by\u00a0giving an account of her experience with the UPP and asking the government to rethink the pacification project. She said the security forces who are supposed to be protecting community members are killing them instead.<\/p>\n

Thiago Matiolli, a researcher, followed Moraes by saying current police violence in Alem\u00e3o comes from the common perception that violence is an inevitable characteristic of a favela, not a social product. This attitude comes from the institutional criminalization of poverty, he said.<\/p>\n

Udson Freitas, representative of the\u00a0Juntos Pelo Complexo do Alem\u00e3o<\/a> organization, added that people in the community have lost any trust they had in the authorities.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll bases have good and bad cops. Unfortunately they bring the bad ones here and send the good ones to the South Zone<\/a>,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

After a resident narrated his compelling anecdote about being beaten by the police, Colonel\u00a0\u00cdbis Silva Pereira responded to all criticism by apologizing on behalf of the police forces.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo cop is educated to punch someone in the face; zero, none of us has that type of training,\u201d he said. \u201cBut that does not mean it doesn\u2019t happen in real situations, so I want to apologize for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marquinhos Pep\u00e9, president of the Resident\u2019s Association of Palmeiras, said he initially supported the UPP pacification project. However, he said, now it\u2019s evident that the UPP brings violence to the community if it is not accompanied by other social projects.<\/p>\n

Teachers Matheus Mendes and Guilherme Moreira from the Caic Teophilo da Souza school said the arrival of the UPP has had negative effects on students’ and teachers\u2019 safety and attendance. Moreira revealed that before the UPP was implemented 1,400 students attended the school, a number that has fallen to 700. The UPP base that will soon be removed from school grounds has been a factor in this decrease in attendance.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe either keep the school or the UPP, because it is not possible for both to coexist,\u201d Moreira said.<\/p>\n

The panel was interrupted several times by frustrated audience members who wanted to recount their own experiences with police brutality. However, most of the time was taken up by the political representatives on the panel. At the end of the hearing, four selected audience members\u2014community activist Mariluce Mari\u00e1, representative of Instituto Ra\u00edzes em Movimento<\/a>\u00a0Alan Brum Pinheiro, community activist Leonardo\u00a0Souza, and resident Andre Luiz Fernandes\u2014were given the microphone to voice their concerns and demands.<\/p>\n

Mari\u00e1 said she enjoyed the event and found it extremely symbolic for the community. However, she\u00a0admitted that\u00a0many left unsatisfied with the lack of audience participation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen a resident receives notice about a hearing like this one, they understand they\u00a0should come to speak, that everyone can speak,\u201d she said. \u201cThat is why people were angry. The majority of the audience were moms of the students here, and they all had something to say.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A public hearing conducted to investigate human rights violations in Complexo do Alem\u00e3o took place on Monday May 4 in the community’s\u00a0Caic The\u00f3philo de Souza Pinto School. The meeting was organized by Brazil\u2019s Parliamentary Commission […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":21969,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1277,1288,1290,1333,329,1329],"tags":[32,842,1627,37,15,1626,152,17,888,638,1539,268,30],"writer":[1453],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-21966","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uppwatch","8":"category-highlight","9":"category-civilsociety","10":"category-event-reports","11":"category-solutions","12":"category-by-international-observers","13":"tag-complexo-do-alemao","14":"tag-debate","15":"tag-human-rights-commission-alerj","16":"tag-north-zone","17":"tag-pacifying-police-unit","18":"tag-palmeiras","19":"tag-participation","20":"tag-police-brutality","21":"tag-police-intimidation","22":"tag-police-occupation","23":"tag-raizes-em-movimento","24":"tag-state-violence","25":"tag-urban-violence","26":"writer-elma-gonzalez"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21966"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=21966"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=21966"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=21966"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=21966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}