Operation Shield/Summer: A year of violence and lethality

With 84 people dead and evidence of summary executions and torture, the police operations in the Baixada Santista region are considered the most lethal in the history of the São Paulo Military Police since the massacre at the Carandiru Penitentiary. A year after the start of these operations, public authorities, such as Governor Tarcísio de Freitas, don’t seem to care still

A 33-year-old black man left his home to buy bread on February 14, 2024, in the Saboó community, in Santos, when he was hit in the arm by a long-range rifle shot. Witnesses claim that, even after he begged for his life, officers of the ROTA tactical police unit shot him four more times. According to the victim’s sister, the officers also shot him in the other arm just to erase the rifle tattoo the man had. None of the officers were wearing body cameras. According to the São Paulo Public Security Secretary, Guilherme Derrite, the action amounted to the “neutralization of a criminal”.

The man was one of the 84 victims of the “Escudo” and “Verão” police operations, carried out in the Baixada Santista region between July 2023 and April 2024. Together, they are considered the most lethal police operations since the massacre of 111 prisoners at the Carandiru Penitentiary — the May Crimes of 2006, which took the lives of over 500 people, are not considered part of a police operation. 

This history of abuse is investigated in a collaborative report prepared by the São Paulo Police Ombudsman’s Office, with civil society organizations, including Conectas, and human rights movements. The report shows how the operations were marked by summary executions, torture, and obstruction of justice.

Vendetta as a policy

The series of murders occurred in retaliation for the death of ROTA military police officer Patrick Bastos Reis, 30 years old. “I heard that thirty people would be killed in total, one for each year of soldier Reis’ life,” Fernanda Balera, coordinator of the Citizenship and Human Rights Unit of the São Paulo Public Defender’s Office, told Piauí magazine when she visited the Baixada region three days after Patrick’s death. In total, according to the São Paulo Public Security Department (SSP-SP), 84 deaths were reported, 2,000 people were arrested, and 240 weapons and nearly 3.6 tons of drugs were seized. 

The SSP-SP claimed that the operations were part of a previously established plan to suppress drug trafficking in the port region, dominated by the PCC gang.

Intelligence vs. War on the Poor

In the same month that the Escudo and Verão operations ended, another operation by the Special Task Force for the Repression of Organized Crime in São Paulo (Gaeco, in the Brazilian Portuguese acronym), of the Prosecution Office, with support from the Military Police and through intelligence work, dismantled two bus companies used by the PCC gang to launder money. These companies received over BRL 800 million in compensation from the São Paulo city hall in 2023.

In 2022, a Federal Police investigation at the Port of Rio de Janeiro, which involved an agent infiltrating two gangs, resulted in the arrest of 25 international drug traffickers and the seizure of 10.8 tons of drugs — three times more than what was seized in Santos. 

There are no records of deaths in these operations.

“Intelligence and strategy allow us to achieve results that dismantle criminal groups; it’s different from this vendetta, this war against the poor that actually tarnishes the image of the police, making many people think that the police are criminals”, says journalist Bruno Paes Manso, researcher at the Center for Violence Studies (NEV, in the Brazilian Portuguese acronym) at the University of São Paulo (USP), in an interview for the newspaper Deutsche Welle Brasil. “You might arrive at a tally of apprehended drugs, but from a strategic point of view it is like running in circles.”

Where are our dead?

In March 2024, shortly before the end of the “Verão” operation, Governor Tarcísio de Freitas was questioned about the complaints filed before the UN by Conectas and Comissão Arns regarding irregularities in the operation. “Honestly, we are very much at ease with what is being done. (…) People can go to the UN, they can go to the Justice League, they can go wherever the hell they want to, I don’t care”, he said.

In February, the Public Defender’s Office of São Paulo, together with Conectas, the Brazilian Public Security Forum (FBSP, acronym in Brazilian Portuguese) and Instituto Vladimir Herzog, had already asked the UN and the IACHR (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights) to end the operation and make it mandatory for police officers to wear body cameras.

“There is evidence that the crime scenes were not preserved, with the version offered by the police being repeated for all fatal incidents: that the suspects were carrying drugs, opened fire were rescued while still alive. In this context, the absence of bodies at crime scenes would make it impossible for forensic experts to collect technical evidence”, the document points out. 

According to a report by the G1 news portal and the TV Globo broadcaster, the bodies of victims of the Military Police were claimed to be alive when taken to hospitals in order to avoid forensic examinations.

High lethality

“I didn’t even know there were 56 [dead],” said São Paulo’s Public Security Secretary, Guilherme Derrite, in relation to the number of fatal victims from the “Verão” operation alone, at the press conference discussing the end of the operation.

According to a survey by the “piauí” magazine, Derrite has already been investigated for 16 homicides that occurred during operations in which he took part as a ROTA police officer — but the investigations do not indicate who fired the final shots. After an operation known as the Barracuda Case, which resulted in the death of six men and the arrest of three police officers on suspicion of torture, Derrite was removed from the force in 2012. His superiors considered his actions excessively lethal.

Derrite was already known on social media due to his appearances on Band and Record programs, ultimately becoming a key figure in the police reality show “Operação de Risco”, broadcast by RedeTV!. In 2018, he became closer to the Bolsonaro family, campaigning with Eduardo Bolsonaro, who became the most voted federal deputy in the state that year. The former police officer was elected to the same position with 119,000 votes. In the 2022 campaign, he won with twice as many votes, but resigned to take up the position of Security Secretary at the request of the governor.

As journalist João Batista Jr. wrote in the piauí magazine, “His inauguration was not well received. He was too young (38 years old), inexperienced (he had never held a management position), military (rivaling with the Civilian Police) and had a low rank (lieutenant, only becoming captain upon retirement)”. Furthermore, “his predecessors were public prosecutors, army generals, law professors, like the current Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Technically more qualified, his predecessors had no connection with any of the police forces, a precaution taken by the governors of São Paulo so as not to further stress an always tense relationship.”

Who watches over the vigilantes?

Since taking office in January 2023, Secretary Derrite has shown an inclination to benefit colleagues who, like him, have a highly lethal history. In the first month, he defended a ROTA raid that fired 28 rounds at a Honda Fit car, killing two occupants, despite a subway camera recording a sergeant planting a gun to simulate a gunfire exchange.

In July 2024, the piauí magazine reported that the São Paulo Public Security Department discreetly changed the rules for the removal of police officers suspected of perpetrating crimes, though without announcing the change in the Official Gazette. An internal bulletin removed the power of regional commanders to remove and investigate police officers involved in incidents such as corruption or crime scene tampering. Now, only the deputy commander of the Military Police, José Augusto Coutinho, close to Derrite, can make these decisions.

Before that, Derrite also promoted a radical overhaul among Military Police leaders, removing 34 colonels without prior notice. These included colonels who had asked for moderation in the Escudo/Verão operations and that only agents with cameras on their uniforms should participate. 

According to the FBSP, in 2020, the last year without the use of body cameras, ROTA soldiers were responsible for 86 deaths. In 2022, the first full year of camera use, that number dropped to 7. In 2023, there was an increase to 33 deaths. From January to early May 2024, 24 deaths were recorded. The ROTA unit actively participated in the Escudo/Verão operations. 

“With the implementation of the cameras, all battalions noticed a significant reduction in the number of deaths due to police interventions, without this meaning an increase in the risk per police officer; quite the opposite. So much so that the number of police officers murdered fell. And these numbers remain the same, this is a very significant reduction. In 2023, however, they start growing again,” FBSP executive director Samira Bueno told the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper. “This shows that we are already undergoing the dismantling of the program. With the new bidding process, the situation tends to get worse.”

In May, the Tarcísio de Freitas administration published a bidding notice for the purchase 12,000 body cameras, in order to acquire new equipment to replace those currently in use. Civil society organizations, including Conectas, have expressed concern with the new guidelines, which entail the end of uninterrupted recordings.

Scenes of an invisible crime

Aside from body cameras, police officers don’t seem to have any appreciation for any other type of recording. In July 2024, one year after the start of operations, the São Paulo Court of Justice charged two more military police officers from the ROTA unit with first-degree murder and obstruction of evidence in the death of Fábio Oliveira Ferreira – the first person killed in the Escudo operation. 

One of the defendants is Captain Marcos Correa de Moraes Verardino, operational coordinator of the raid and the first officer reported, who fired three rifle shots at Ferreira, even after he had surrendered. The other is Corporal Ivan Pereira da Silva, who shot the victim twice more in the chest, while the victim was already lying on the ground. 

Upon realizing that the raid had been recorded by cameras at a nearby residence, the agents invaded the house, requested access to the recordings and returned the equipment after about 20 minutes, claiming that it had not made any recordings. “However, during the investigation it was found that the DVRs and HDs were working perfectly, that is, they recorded and stored the footage captured by the eight installed monitoring cameras,” the complaint states, as published by the UOL portal, reinforcing the notion that the footage was missing. 

In total, six military police officers from the ROTA unit are defendants accused of murder during the Escudo operation.

Endless violence

None of this, however, seems to lessen the pain of Beatriz Silva Rosa, 29. She is the widow of Leonel Andrade Santos, killed at the age of 36 during the Verão operation. Contrary to what the Public Security Department claims, Leonel did not appear to be a person capable of confronting the police. 

“He used two crutches to move, he couldn’t walk without them, much less fire a weapon,” Beatriz told Deutsche Welle Brasil. According to neighbors, the police ordered Leonel to throw down his crutches and run, but he was shot in the chest when he couldn’t. 

“My oldest son looks at me every day and says: ‘Mom, I’m going to stop studying, I want to kill the police officers who killed my father’. Then I tell him that he can’t do that, that if he wants to help people, he should study and become a lawyer,” he says. “They want to kill parents in the favelas, waiting for their children to grow up so they can exchange fire with them and kill their children as well.”