Public statement :: Barbaric pattern
Conectas stands with the families of five young victims of another massacre in São Paulo
Conectas stands with the families of Caique Henrique Machado, César Augusto Gomes, Jonathan Moreira, Jones Ferreira Januário and Robson Donato de Paula.
The bodies of five young men who disappeared on October 21 were found yesterday, November 6, in the city of Mogi das Cruzes, in Greater São Paulo, and their identities were confirmed this morning by Júlio César Fernandes Neves, the São Paulo police ombudsman. They were aged between 16 and 30 and were on their way to a party when they were intercepted and killed.
There are several signs of police involvement in the crime. In his final contact with friends, Jonathan said that they had been stopped by the police and that the officers were being heavy-handed. The story appears to repeat a barbaric pattern that routinely victimizes black youth from the poor urban outskirts.
Moreover, the Public Security Department was remiss in the initial search efforts, taking two weeks to authorize the use of a helicopter in the operation, in yet another display by authorities of indifference and lack of commitment to protect the population from the urban outskirts.
Conectas is calling for investigations into the involvement of state agents in this crime to be conducted quickly and independently, guaranteeing justice and reparation for the families. According to the organization, episodes like this reinforce the urgent need to radically transform the structure of public security and the militarized model of policing.
Currently, forensic and criminology bodies are directly linked to the state public security departments, which control and command the police forces. This functional and institutional dependence prevents crimes committed by police officers from being investigated independently and impartially.
The episode also exposes the lack of external oversight of police activity, which is the responsibility of the state Public Prosecutor’s Office. As far as Conectas is concerned, the increasing number of killings by the police is a clear sign that this constitutional duty is not being adequately performed by the Office.
According to data from the Brazilian Public Security Forum, nine people are killed by the police every day in the country – 3,345 in 2015, an increase of 6.3% from 2014. As the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo has pointed out, Brazilian security forces kill every six days the same number of people that the British police have killed in 25 years.
Conectas believes that only a commitment to structural reform can change this unacceptable level of violence. Crimes like the one that ended the lives of these five young men have no place in an effective democracy.
