{"id":38028,"date":"2017-08-11T08:20:04","date_gmt":"2017-08-11T11:20:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=38028"},"modified":"2018-07-17T08:22:28","modified_gmt":"2018-07-17T11:22:28","slug":"baixada-residents-and-activists-speak-out-about-public-security-hearing-held-by-prosecutors-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=38028","title":{"rendered":"Baixada Residents and Activists Speak Out About Public Security Hearing Held by Prosecutor’s Office"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

On Monday July 31 the Rio de Janeiro Public Prosecutor\u2019s Office held a public hearing to debate the latest security crisis<\/a> to hit the state of Rio and its impact on the protection of citizens. Bringing together two working groups within the Public Prosecutor\u2019s Office\u2013the Human Rights and Minorities Department<\/a> and the Public Security Working Group\u2013the public hearing with its approximately 300 attendees occurred 23 hours after a declaration by Raul Jungmann, Brazil\u2019s Minister of Defense. On Sunday, the minister had outlined the strategic planning of the Peace and Security Operation (Opera\u00e7\u00e3o Paz e Seguran\u00e7a). According to Jungmann the operation would once again authorize the deployment of the armed forces and its highly militarized apparatus to undertake anti-crime operations.<\/p>\n

Douglas Almeida, an economist, doctoral student of sociology and resident of S\u00e3o Jo\u00e3o de Meriti<\/a>\u00a0in the\u00a0Baixada Fluminense<\/a> region, was present at the hearing. Almeida said that even though the hearing\u2019s attendees were numerous and diverse, the Baixada Fluminense region and other municipalities in Rio\u2019s metropolitan region<\/a> were poorly represented, despite being areas with high levels of violence and fatalities<\/a>. \u201cThe situation in the Baixada was hardly mentioned by the speakers. Given the amount of time allocated to the panel, the gravity of our situation was given little attention, considering the startling levels of homicide<\/a> in the region and the fact that violence is increasing at a higher rate in the Baixada than in the city of Rio<\/a>,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Almeida expressed surprise at some of the statements he heard from the panel: \u201cAt some points the participants got angry, making statements that were permeated with hatred. It seemed at one point that police officers present thought there was an underlying conflict between members of civil society and the police<\/a> officers present. The Military Police<\/a> should have taken the opportunity to take a critical look at their incursions into the favelas. Lives cannot be treated as collateral damage.”<\/p>\n

Adriano de Ara\u00fajo, sociologist and coordinator of F\u00f3rum Grita Baixada<\/a>, noted that the theme of public security, just like other social issues discussed in Brazil, \u201cis deeply rooted<\/a> in dichotomized and hateful positions. All this talk, deprived of real facts, makes it hard to think of alternatives to the security situation<\/a> people are facing. Some of the statements from the panel set up the model of the policeman in a fight of good against evil, working heroically to protect society, negating the politics of confrontation. This image of the police does not take into account the increase in fatalities resulting from police actions, nor the daily conflicts that take place as part of the politics of the war on drugs<\/a>. It also doesn\u2019t explain how some segments of society are more vulnerable than others, such as people who live in favelas or on the outskirts of the city and young black men<\/a>,\u201d Ara\u00fajo argued.<\/p>\n

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

What Ara\u00fajo was most surprised by were the statements referring to police actions. Some said that the institution of the police should not be subject to any kind of control. \u201cThis is frightening,\u201d he said, \u201cespecially since one of the roles of the Public Prosecutor\u2019s Office is to monitor police activity. This leads me to wonder how it would be if police actions were not held to account by society? I think the statements show a kind of military logic that separates the police from civil society, leading to the idea that the Military Police should not be monitored or under any external control.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frans\u00e9rgio Goulart, historian and political consultant for the\u00a0Human Rights Center of the Nova Igua\u00e7u Diocese<\/a>, said that public hearings like this one have resulted in \u201clittle or no change<\/a> in the lives of those whose rights have been violated.\u201d He said that the Public Prosecutor\u2019s Office had let the public hearing lose focus, straying from the objectives originally proposed for the meeting. \u201cAt no point in the meeting description did it say that we were going to discuss entry routes into police careers, or the financial matters of the police, or projects to militarize schools<\/a>. The priorities of the meeting ended up being weighted towards the police\u2013the police which has demonstrated institutional racism<\/a> and a taste for the politics of confrontation,\u201d said Goulart.<\/p>\n

However, Goulart also recognized that many favela residents were able to criticize public security policies. \u201cThey spoke about how these communities have become like battlegrounds during a war where young people, especially poor and black youth<\/a>, are being exterminated. This is a fact, it\u2019s more than just an ideological feeling; black police officers kill black youth and vice versa. But, when police officers or ex-police officers spoke during the public hearing, they ended up referring to themselves as heroes or guardians of society, and this ends up removing the idea of dialogue between the two sides, since it imposes a sense of superiority,\u201d Goulart said.<\/p>\n

Another criticism made by those interviewed for this article was the absence of members of the Rio de Janeiro State Legislative Assembly (ALERJ) at the public hearing, other than the participation of the president of ALERJ’s Human Rights Commission<\/a>, Marcelo Freixo<\/a>. Roberto S\u00e1<\/a>, Security Secretary, spent a large part of his allocated speaking time talking about controlling weapons, but didn\u2019t go into detail on the issue of the Military Police\u2019s excessive use of force and made generalizing statements on corruption<\/a>, saying that the police is only a \u201creflection of society.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mario Brum, a researcher at Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ<\/a>) who studies urban peripheries, thought that the Public Prosecutor\u2019s Office acted correctly in trying to mediate a range of different views on the security debate and praised the strength of the testimonies of residents who had lost family members but, similar to the other people interviewed for this article, also had the impression that both sides of the debate took an overly defensive position. \u201cI was worried by the way people were suggesting that fighting crime should be done by \u2018going to the top\u2019<\/a> and also the way in which campaigning for the protection of people\u2019s lives was labelled as \u2018defending criminals<\/a>\u2019 or \u2018preventing the police from carrying out their work,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This article was written by Fabio Leon and produced through a partnership between RioOnWatch and F\u00f3rum Grita Baixada<\/a>. Fabio Leon is a journalist and human rights activist who works as communications officer for F\u00f3rum Grita Baixada. F\u00f3rum Grita Baixada is a forum of people and organizations working in and around the Baixada Fluminense, focusing on developing strategies and initiatives in the area of public security, which is considered a necessary requirement for citizenship and for the right to the city. Follow F\u00f3rum Grita Baixada on Facebook here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas On Monday July 31 the Rio de Janeiro Public Prosecutor\u2019s Office held a public hearing to debate the latest security crisis to hit the state of Rio and its impact on […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":38030,"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":[1288,1328,1290,1333,336],"tags":[460,140,2496,1197,25,1627,630,918,122,917,2481,2773,809,1699,268,651],"writer":[2495],"translator":[1401],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-38028","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-highlight","8":"category-by-community-contributors","9":"category-civilsociety","10":"category-event-reports","11":"category-violations","12":"tag-baixada-fluminense","13":"tag-corruption","14":"tag-forum-grita-baixada","15":"tag-greater-rio","16":"tag-human-rights","17":"tag-human-rights-commission-alerj","18":"tag-marcelo-freixo","19":"tag-military-police","20":"tag-nova-iguacu","21":"tag-police-reform","22":"tag-police-violence","23":"tag-prosecutors-office","24":"tag-public-security","25":"tag-sao-joao-de-meriti","26":"tag-state-violence","27":"tag-uerj","28":"writer-fabio-leon","29":"translator-sarah-jacobs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38028","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\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38028"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=38028"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=38028"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=38028"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=38028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}