Police murder street kids: Brazil promises reform

Police murder street kids: Brazil promises reform FWD
Tom Boland )
Sun, 13 Dec 1998 15:34:17 -0400

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Abusive police powers being curbed in Latin America

Copyright + 1998 Nando Media
Copyright + 1998 The Christian Science Monitor

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (December 12, 1998 7:39 p.m. EST
http://www.nandotimes.com) -- Brazil's police are known for
internationally for gunning down eight street children as they slept
in front of a downtown Rio church in 1993. At that time, police
reforms were promised by the federal government, but rampant crime and
violence by rogue cops continues, human rights activists say.

Residents of one Rio slum got so fed up with police abuse that they
began sticking on their doors copies of the Brazilian Constitution
guaranteeing citizens the "inviolability of the home."

Last year, an amateur cameraman filmed a Sao Paulo patrolman, known as
Rambo, stopping cars, extorting money from drivers, and then killing a
passenger in cold blood. More recently, 40 policemen are under
investigation for stealing cars and selling them in neighboring
Bolivia, and several clandestine cemeteries were unearthed, disclosing
victims of police death squads in the northeastern state of Alagoas.

Also last year, the Organization of American States branded Latin
American police the region's most abusive institution and a threat to
its fledgling democracies.

Some improvements have occurred:

This year some 300 police commanders were forced to retire in
Argentina. The Buenos Aires department has been split into smaller
units with a civilian oversight committee.

In the Central American countries of El Salvador, Honduras, and
Panama, the U.S.-backed International Criminal Investigative Training
Assistance Program has helped turn corrupt military police forces into
disciplined civilian agencies. In Panama, for example, a new
anti-narcotics squad has replaced a trafficker-dominated force.

Colombia is probably the best case of fast reforms. National Police
Chief Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano has removed nearly 8 percent of his
108,000-member force for corruption or incompetence since taking over
in 1994. His reforms require policemen to have a high school diploma,
a measure that Rio officials had to give up since they couldn't find
enough qualified candidates. (Rio police now must have at least an
eighth-grade education.)

"It keeps me up at night thinking about the Brazilian police's high
disregard for human rights," Jose Gregori, the nation's secretary for
human rights, told reporters last month.

Low wages cause cop crime?
In Brazil, as in other Latin American countries, underpaid and
undersupervised police forces routinely engage in murder, kidnappings,
bribery, torture, extortion, and other crime. Experts say criminal
cops flourish because of an ineffective judicial system, a lack of
reform efforts, and low wages.

When beat cops are accused of abuses, they are nearly always
exonerated by lenient military courts. And, in most states, police
earn as little as a domestic, leading them to seek income wherever
they can find it.

"To offer a policeman $300 a month and expect him to be honest is an
idiot's proposition," said former Rio Police Chief Helio Luz.
President Fernando Henrique Cardoso has pledged to enact sweeping
reforms of the police and the criminal justice system and to create a
federal witness protection program. His government has created a human
rights program, codified a law against torture, and advised the
nation's 26 states each to create a civilian police review board to
which residents can take their complaints and whose investigations can
lead to prosecution.

To date, three states have heeded the call - Para, Minas Gerais, and
Sao Paulo, with the latter's board punishing some 2,000 policemen in
the past two years for crimes such as torture, corruption, and abuse
of power, according to Benedito Domingos Mariano, the board ombudsman.
Moreover, Gregori, the secretary of human rights, announced last month
the creation of a special commission to improve police efficiency and
review training methods. To remind police they should shoot to
disable, not to kill, the Sao Paulo Police Department recently added
arms and legs to the torsos and heads of its cardboard human cutouts
used for target practice.

"The problem is not that police are unaware that they aren't supposed
to torture and kill," says James Cavallaro, director of the Brazil
office of Human Rights Watch. "The problem is no one prosecutes them
when they commit those crimes."

Acquitted in massacre case
In the most recent court case, 10 policemen were charged in the 1993
slaying of 21 Rio slum dwellers - the worst massacre involving
Brazilian police death squads. Last month they were found not guilty
for lack of evidence. Only two of 52 police charged in the massacre
have been convicted.

Justice officials, however, argue there has been progress and point to
three other high-profile court cases this year.

On Oct. 15 a judge sentenced detective Jorge Luiz Fernandez, known as
"George the Smotherer," to 42 years for killing two and injuring four
innocent people in 1995 while trying to eliminate a witness to one of
his previous murders.

Also in October, Sao Paulo policeman Otavio Lourenco "Rambo" Gambra
received 65 years in jail for crimes including murder of a young man
in 1997 after stopping his automobile. Officer Gambra was arrested
with nine other officers after a video of the episode was shown on
national television.

Early this year, federal agents in northeastern Alagoas state arrested
police Lt. Col. Manoel Cavalcante for heading a 50-man police gang
known as the Uniformed Gang.

Currently the entire group is in jail and under federal investigation,
and Colonel Cavalcante has been convicted of homicide and receiving
stolen property.

Isolated convictions
Human Rights Watch's Cavallaro, however, says such convictions are
isolated cases and that cops still routinely get away with murder by
filing false reports describing extrajudicial executions as shootouts
with dangerous criminals.

"What we are seeing now is the beginning of an effort to prosecute
police, but, to date, they have been limited to cases that have either
been televised like Rambo or have caused a massive public outcry like
George the Smotherer Fernandez," Cavallaro says.

He argues that Fernandez was apprehended only because four of his
victims were innocent women and several survived to testify against
him.

"He stepped out of the ordinary procedure of arresting and eliminating
criminal suspects, which doesn't provoke public outrage," he says.

While polls show that society disapproves of police impunity, they
also show that many Brazilians living in crime-ridden cities support
death-squad killings of suspected criminals.

In Sao Paulo, former policemen running for elective office boast of
killing "bandits." State congressman Roberval Conte Lopes, a retired
police captain, proudly told voters that he had killed 43 criminals.

And Ubiratan Guimaraes, another Sao Paulo elected official, led the
1992 "Carandiru massacre," a raid that killed 111 inmates after a
prison riot.

Some critics fear that police killings will continue unabated as long
as most victims remain poor and lack political clout.

During Brazil's 1964-1985 military dictatorship, "the middle class
repudiated police torture because their sons were the victims," says
Mariano, the Sao Paulo ombudsman for the police review board..

"Now no one cares, since the victims are mostly from the slums."

By Jack Epstein, Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Joe F. Walenciak, Ph.D.
Chairman, Division of Business
John Brown University
Siloam Springs, Arkansas 72761
U.S.A.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++
Streetkid-L Resource Page: http://www.jbu.edu/business/sk.html
Listowner: , John Brown University
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Your post is OFF TOPIC!!!

Please post these depressing postings to soc.culture.latin-america
This a forum for travel only.


(P E T E R P A N) wrote in message om...
Police murder street kids: Brazil promises reform FWD
Tom Boland )
Sun, 13 Dec 1998 15:34:17 -0400

Messages sorted by: [ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ]
Next message: Tom Boland: "Spare Change: Boston street paper joins HPN
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http://www2.nando.net:80/newsroom/nt..._noframes.html

Abusive police powers being curbed in Latin America

Copyright + 1998 Nando Media
Copyright + 1998 The Christian Science Monitor

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (December 12, 1998 7:39 p.m. EST
http://www.nandotimes.com) -- Brazil's police are known for
internationally for gunning down eight street children as they slept
in front of a downtown Rio church in 1993. At that time, police
reforms were promised by the federal government, but rampant crime and
violence by rogue cops continues, human rights activists say.

....