A São Paulo city governor is seen leading an unarmed man to a passing party in the neighborhood of Latin America’s largest city.
A second later, the driver pushes a man who falls from a height of three meters into a shallow black stream, loaded with garbage. Three other officers watching the scene unfold, they can’t be seen actually taking anything.
The victim – later identified as the motorcycle delivery driver – was rescued by local people and taken to hospital. He lived. By Thursday morning the officer was arrestedbut others were suspended in business.
The nasty footage – recorded from afar by a passer-by – the outrage has moved across Brazil and has become the most shocking example yet of how the state’s police force in São Paulo has become increasingly violent since the beginning of the year.
This was when Tarcísio de Freitas, one of the most powerful members of the far-right cabinet of former president Jair Bolsonaro, took charge after winning the 2022 state elections.
In the country’s most famous and richest state, Freitas – a former army engineer – has been seen as Bolsonaro’s key heir to the state and is often praised as a “moderate” version of his mentor.
But this image is distorted rise in police killings. In recent weeks, public outrage has been sparked by the deaths a four-year-old boy, a medical student and who Purgato caught stealing products.
“Freedom is not controlled. The repression is starting, with the force of the Western police, and the popular idea that “a good criminal is a dead criminal”, said Paul César Ramos, a sociologist and researcher at ” thinktank Afrocebrap.
In March, when the capital operations had resulted in 39 deaths in one month, the president published a report sent by Brazilian organizations to the United Nations on human rights violations committed by the São Paulo police.
“We’re very confident in what’s going on. People can go to the UN, the Justice League — or hell for all I care.” Freitas said at the time.
According to Ramos, São Paulo police officers not only “feel the act of killing, but some are forced to do it.”
Guilherme Derrite, the secretary of public security of São Paulo, once said that it was “Disgraceful” for an officer killed less than three men in five years of serviceYou are paying taxes as a measure of productivity.
Freitas calls two-faced to rob Derrite, but the president he defended his subordinatearguing that the “numbers” are a drop in robbery – proving that they are “doing a good job”.
Ramos argued that such comments were all made with an eye to the 2026 presidential election. Bolsonaro who charge federal officials conspired to prevent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from taking office.stopped running By releasing Derrite – who is the most popular among Bolsonaro’s supporters – Freitas risks alienating his base.
“They are all part of a political thing that seeks legitimacy by producing deaths,” Ramos said. “And the victims are the poorer people, the Black people and those who live on the outskirts: those considered below the human line, and therefore “killable”, added the sociologist.