In a recent body cam video Sao Paulo police posted to their official YouTube account, a man arrested after a nighttime chase admits he robbed someone and fired several shots toward pursuing officers. And we will discipline those who make mistakes.” “A drunk person accusing an officer of being violent will be checked against the images. All of that could go to court as evidence,” Cabanas said at police headquarters. Policemen at the scene will see the child crying, the house turned upside down, sometimes they will still see an angry husband. “Think of domestic violence, a crime that is hard to prove. Robson Cabanas, a military police officer who coordinates the program, said the goal isn’t only to reduce police brutality or burnish the force’s image he also hopes the cameras will produce evidence. The program aims to ramp up to 10,000 cameras for Sao Paulo’s 80,000-strong force by June.Ĭol. The brief timeframe makes it hard to draw conclusions, particularly since overall police-involved deaths fell in the state, though much less sharply. Its officers were involved in four deaths from June to September, down from 23 in 2020. The biggest drop was in an elite squad that conducts raids on suspects. Internal police data obtained by The Associated Press show those 18 battalions were involved in 10 deaths over the following four months, down from 73 in the same period of 2020. Melina Risso, a program director at the Rio-based security think tank Igarape Institute, said some of the battalions chosen have long histories of violence. In June, 3,000 Sao Paulo state police officers began using body cameras in 18 of its 120 battalions. Still, the adoption of body cameras is “an indication that there is a greater openness to talk about the problem of police violence,” said David Marques, a project coordinator at the Forum of Public Safety. The governors-elect of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo made similar overtures the former famously said police will shoot criminals “in their little heads.” That’s more than 17 per day, and the most since the group started monitoring in 2013.īut many Brazilians are more worried about crime itself: Law and order played a central role in the last presidential election, when victorious candidate Jair Bolsonaro pledged to give cops carte blanche to use lethal force. Last year, more than 6,400 people died at the hands of police officers on and off duty, according to the Brazilian Forum of Public Safety, an independent organization that tracks national crime statistics. Minc, though, is convinced: “If the law for cameras on uniforms had already come into effect, we wouldn’t have had the Jacarezinho massacre,” he told The Associated Press.įor years, Brazilian state authorities have considered making law officers wear body cameras, sometimes trying small-scale initiatives, and they are closely watching the recent broad implementation in Sao Paulo.īrazil as a whole has a long history of police violence.
Early, limited data has offered some hints that they might reduce violence by police, despite mixed findings in other countries that have used them. The state has accepted tender for 22,000 cameras, though it’s not yet clear when officers in Rio will start to use them.īut Brazil’s most populous state, Sao Paulo, has already begun experimenting with body cams.
Minc says the bloodshed helped muster support to pass the bill just days later. Instead, they left behind 28 corpses, all of them local residents.Įven in a city used to violent policing, the episode was stunning. On May 6, hundreds of police with armored vehicles stormed the working-class Jacarezinho neighborhood at dawn, ostensibly to capture suspected criminals. Then came the city’s deadliest police operation.
And for years, his proposal languished in Rio’s legislature. SAO PAULO (AP) - For years, Carlos Minc, a Rio de Janeiro state lawmaker, pushed to make body cameras mandatory in all law enforcement agencies.