The influencer and cultural producer Júlio César De Sá Dantas, 31, contacted the Civil Police this Thursday (18th) to denounce a racist approach he suffered last Wednesday (17th). The action was right after the boy left a clothing store in downtown Rio. The dialogue between him and the PMs was broadcast live on the Carioquice Negra profile, which he owns and has more than 800,000 followers on the networks social.
In the video, he immediately questions the reason for the approach and receives as an answer that he would have entered and left the establishment very quickly. Throughout the action, Julio questions whether the real fact was the color of his skin.
In another excerpt, one of the officers also claims that Júlio had a suspicious volume on his waist. The young man lifts the blouse and shows that there was no object. One agent even said that the volume could be the effect of the wind on the shirt. The event producer, then, refuses to deliver the identification because he understands that there was no concrete reason for the approach and starts being accused of disobedience. At first, it is possible to identify two police officers, but soon the number grows and reaches six, according to the boy.
Júlio was taken to the 5th Civil Police Precinct, in the center of the city, the same precinct where, on Thursday (18), he filed a complaint against the approach.
“Giant discomfort of knowing that it’s not a new thing, that it wasn’t the last time, that in the last 24 hours it happened again. I’m here for this agenda to be questioned, discussed, for institutions to raise this agenda and reverberate, to change this approach. It was two in the afternoon there, I wondered if it was late at night what would it be,” said Júlio, to CNN.
The influencer was accompanied by lawyers from the Institute for the Defense of the Black Population (IDPN), who commented on the case.
“We don’t want the policeman to be painted as the only cause of the damage that Júlio experienced, but rather that we can question the structure that makes this possible. Discuss the role of the police in action selectivity. We cannot naturalize this”, stated Joel Luiz da Costa, who after the interview confirmed the opening of an investigation for racism.
Wanted by CNN about the complaint of the cultural producer, Operation Segurança Presente (OSP) expressed the following note: “The police officers from Centro Presente were patrolling the region of the Center and suspected the boy who, according to them, showed dissatisfaction with the police approach and seemed wanting to get rid of agents entering a store. The police approached the boy and asked him to identify himself. However, he refused and, therefore, was taken to the police station to be identified. At the police station he was identified, nothing was found and he was released.”
A CNN he also asked the Civil Police for a note and is awaiting their return.
For Rodrigo Mondego, vice president of the State Council for the Defense of Human Rights of Rio de Janeiro and attorney for the Human Rights Commission of the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB), the police approach needs to be based on some concrete suspicion of a crime committed.
“When there is no motivation for the approach and the person is taken to the police station without justification, it is characterized as an abuse of authority. The person can only be detained in the case of flagrante delicto, in the case of a crime, or by court order. No one can be detained for investigation. This is an instrument used in the dictatorship. It is a violation of the Constitution and the Code of Criminal Procedure. Being black is not a suspicious attitude”, pointed out Mondego.
Reference: CNN Brasil
