Baixada Santista has 34% of deaths due to police intervention in the state, says Public Defender of SP

Report from the Public Defender's Office of the State of São Paulo shows that 34% of deaths due to police intervention occurred in Baixada Santista, between January 1st and February 1st. The document was sent to the São Paulo State Public Security Secretariat (SSP-SP) last Friday (1st).

47 deaths were recorded due to incidents involving police officers in the state, 16 of which were in the cities of Cubatão, Guarujá, Santos, São Vicente and Praia Grande. According to the report, “there is a disproportionate use of force in these operations in this region.” The numbers of deaths by police officers on duty were collected from the folder.

The report also points out that seven of the deaths occurred within a five-day interval, between January 28 and February 1, and occurred “after the death of police officer Marcelo Augusto da Silva in the Cubatão region, which confirms the clear correlation between the victimization of police officers on duty and the increase in police lethality in the same region after the intensification of police operations”.

The center also had access to seven police reports on the nine deaths that occurred in Baixada Santista during Operation Verão, which began in January this year after the deaths of military police officers in the region.

And in the midst of investigations, it was identified that there is no mention of the use of police cameras in at least 4 documents, in which route police officers are involved – one of the battalions already equipped with cameras and that there is a repetition of the police version in all occurrences with deaths.

The defender's office makes it clear that it began this investigation during Operation Shield, last year, to monitor deaths resulting from police intervention and at the time, 25 police reports were analyzed, which allowed us to reach a conclusion “there is a standardization of behavior that exceeds legal parameters on the use of force by security agents”, says the document.

The Citizenship and Human Rights Center of the Ombudsman's Office carried out a visit to three communities in Baixada and received reports from 24 people about institutional violence.

The visits were to Vila Teimosa/Vila Sonia in Praia Grande, Vila dos Pescadores in Cubatão and Vila dos Criadores in Santos.

“Irregular entry into homes without a court order and the overt presence in crowded environments of police with the use of heavy weapons, especially at times when children arrive and leave for schools. There were also reports of police approaches that were not justified by well-founded suspicion. In reality, what these communities report, in addition to asking for peace and respect, is precisely the scenario of terror created due to this overt police presence”, says Surraily Youssef, public defender and coordinator of the Specialized Center for Citizenship and Human Rights.

The document presents the report of some residents using a pseudonym so that their identity is preserved, in which they point out police approaches,

One of the people said that his 10-year-old son and three friends were playing in front of the residents' association and the police pointed rifles at them. The children then entered the association to seek shelter.

Another report states that “he pointed the gun at me and asked me to lift my shirt and turn my back. He said everything was fine and asked me to continue on my way. The police presence increased here in the community, they had never searched me before like what happened now. We consider this police presence unnecessary, we are not thieves. It’s not because we live in a community that we do wrong things”, says the statement.

In a note sent to CNN , the SSP-SP says that the department sent the State Public Defender's Office on Friday (1st) the clarifications requested in relation to the operation. “The ministry emphasizes that all cases of death in confrontation are strictly carried out by the Civil and Military Police, with monitoring by the respective Internal Affairs Departments, the Public Ministry and the Judiciary, which even have access to images from portable body cameras (COPs) used by the PMs involved. in incidents”, states the note.

Operation Summer

On February 2, the São Paulo Military Police launched Operation Summer in the Baixada Santista region, on the coast of São Paulo. Motivated by the death of Rota soldier Samuel Wesley Cosmo, in Santos, the operation has already registered 39 suspects dead.