A São Paulo state police officer is seen leading an unarmed man to the edge of an overpass in an impoverished neighbourhood of Latin America’s largest city.
Seconds later, the officer pushes the man, who falls backwards from a height of three metres into a shallow stream of murky, sewage-laden water. Three other officers can be seen watching the scene unfold, taking no action.
The victim – later identified as a motorcycle delivery driver – was rescued by local people and taken to a hospital. He survived. By Thursday morning, the officer responsible had been arrested, while 12 others involved in the operation were suspended.
The shocking footage – recorded from a distance by a passerby – has sparked outrage across Brazil and become the most harrowing example yet of how the state police force in São Paulo has grown increasingly violent since the start of last year.
That was when Tarcísio de Freitas, one of the most influential members of far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro’s cabinet, took over as governor after winning the 2022 state elections.
Having won in the country’s most populous and wealthiest state, Freitas – a former army engineer – has since been seen as Bolsonaro’s key political heir and is often lauded as a “moderate” version of his mentor.
But this image has been tarnished by the rise in police killings. In recent weeks, public outrage has been sparked by the deaths of a four-year-old boy, a medical student and a man caught stealing cleaning products.
“Freitas is not moderate. He is committed to repression, to a police force that kills, and to the populist notion that ‘a good criminal is a dead criminal’,” said Paulo César Ramos, a sociologist and researcher at the thinktank Afrocebrap.
In March, when police operations had resulted in 39 deaths in just one month, the governor dismissed a report Brazilian organisations sent to the United Nations about human rights violations committed by São Paulo police.
“We are very confident in what’s being done. People can go to the UN, to the Justice League – or to hell for all I care,” Freitas said at the time.
According to Ramos, São Paulo police officers not only feel “authorised to kill, but some feel compelled to do so”.
Guilherme Derrite, São Paulo’s public safety secretary, once said that it was “shameful” for an officer to have killed fewer than three people in five years of service, implying that death tolls were a measure of productivity.
Freitas has faced calls to sack Derrite, but the governor has defended his subordinate, arguing that the “numbers” – a drop in robbery rates – prove he is “doing a good job”.
Ramos argued that such comments are all made with an eye to the 2026 presidential elections. Bolsonaro, who federal police allege conspired to carry out a coup to prevent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from taking office, is barred from running. By dismissing Derrite – who is highly popular among Bolsonaro’s supporters – Freitas would risk alienating his base.
“They all are part of a political project that seeks legitimacy through the production of deaths,” said Ramos. “And the victims are the poorest, Black people and those who live in the outskirts: those considered below the line of what is human and, therefore, ‘killable’,” added the sociologist.
Source: theguardian.com
