RIO DE JANEIRO – On Tuesday, in another police operation, six people were killed. The victim of the new massacre was the Manguinhos slum, in Rio’s North Zone. Manguinhos is next to Jacarezinho, where last year 27 people were killed in a civilian and military police operation.
In the photo, policemen carry bodies in a vehicle, an illegal practice that prevents any possibility of investigation on how the deaths occurred, leaving only the policeman’s version.
According to residents, the police even used helicopters, shooting at the local population. This practice is known as the “Flying Caveirão” by the residents. Also according to people who live in the area, one of the young men killed worked in a car wash. They also say that some of them worked as retailers for the drug traffic, but that this can never be a justification for killing them.
There are reports of young people who were cornered and tortured and threatened with death by police officers.
Once again the police ignore the determination of the Supreme Court (STF) in the ADPF (Ação de Descumprimento de Preceito Fundamental) 635, or “ADPF das Favelas”, which restricts police operations in slums. Any raid on communities must be notified to the Public Ministry and have a justification.
The Popular Public Safety Forum of the State of Rio de Janeiro, an entity that acts to combat the “war on drugs” policy and that brings together dozens of social movements and human rights organizations, in a statement, repudiated “the logic of war production in black territories justified by the false discourse of fighting crime.”
According to the state, civilian police officers from the Bomb Squad were “targets of attack by criminals when they were passing through Avenida Dom Helder Câmara, on their way to the Police City. There was a reaction and the agents requested reinforcement.” The operation that resulted in another massacre was of the Special Resources Coordination (Core) of the Civil Police.
THE STATE VIOLENCE
In 2020 alone, 64% of the people shot in the state were shot during police actions and operations, according to the Fogo Cruzado Institute. Jacarezinho was the place that suffered most from massacres.
In the same year, in March and April alone, 290 people died in the state in police operations, although part of the population was confined home on the recommendation of the authorities and crimes in general have decreased. This number of victims is equivalent to one-third of those killed by U.S. police in all of 2019.
The 290 deaths from police intervention in Rio – in two months marked by confinement to contain coronavirus contagions – represent a 13% increase over 2019, a year in which deaths were already a record. In April alone, the number of deaths rose 43% over the same month last year. In the four-month period, Rio totals 606 deaths by state action – 8% more than in the same period of 2019, according to data from the Public Security Institute.
In 2021, in an operation by the Civil and Military Police in the Favela of Jacarezinho, North Zone of Rio, 27 people were murdered. The case became known as the “Jacarezinho Massacre. This year, 23 people were killed by police in Vila Cruzeiro, in Penha, also in the city’s North Zone. Police massacres are common in Rio de Janeiro.
SOURCE: Mídia 1508
