VIII. Recommendations

The legitimate efforts of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo to curb violence and lawlessness will continue to suffer so long as some members of their police forces continue to commit unlawful killings. And these unlawful police killings are almost certain to remain a major problem so long as the criminal justice system of each state continues to rely so heavily on the police to police themselves.

Human Rights Watch was encouraged to find that top prosecutors in both states—including the attorneys general—recognized the scope and nature of the problem of police abuse and impunity, and insured us that they were fully committed to finding ways to address it. We believe that the obstacles that these prosecutors face when it comes to overseeing police investigators and prosecuting police abuses are real. However, we also believe these obstacles can be overcome, provided that the states take concrete measures to do so.

The key measure that both states should pursue is the creation of permanent units within their respective public prosecutors offices specialized in police killing cases, allocating the personnel, resources, and expertise necessary to ensure effective investigation and prosecute police abuse cases in collaboration with the legally-assigned natural prosecutor (promotor natural).

Assigning prosecutors to work solely on this issue would reduce conflicts of interests and create incentives to ensure that adequate investigations are carried out. Pedro Fortes, a Rio prosecutor who used to work on intentional homicide cases, identified several benefits to having a permanent prosecutorial task force on alleged resistance killings by police, among them the fact that the team would be able to analyze patterns of abuse, recognize relevant modi operandi, identify bad actors early, and ensure that investigations were properly conducted. It would also create a public institution outside the police apparatus where family members of police abuse victims could go and, hopefully, feel safe testifying and bringing complaints.[438]

Often, where prosecutors have been able to conduct or closely follow investigations into police killings themselves, significant results have been achieved. For example, Alexandre Themístocles de Vasconcelos, a prosecutor in charge of police oversight in connection with two of Rio’s scores of civil police precincts, looked closely at forensic evidence in 20 police killings in the area under his jurisdiction from 2007 through 2008. In an unprecedented move, Vasconcelos brought charges against 30 military police officers simultaneously in connection with the cases. São Paulo, too, contains several positive examples of successful prosecutor-led investigations of police officers in the Special Action Group for Combating Organized Crime (GAECO) and GECEP units.

Other positive examples can be found in Brasilia. There, a police oversight unit in the Prosecutor’s Office of the Federal District routinely investigates police killing and torture cases directly. Today,the Federal District contains some areas, like Ceilândia, with high levels of criminal violence yet relatively low levels of police killings contrasted to places in Rio with comparable crime levels and demographics. Celso Leardini, a former civil police precinct chief and now the head of the special team of prosecutors that carries out police oversight in the Federal District said he strongly believes in the ability of prosecutorial monitoring to prevent police abuse.[439] In his unit, prosecutors themselves conduct or closely follow all police killing and torture investigations.[440]

Human Rights Watch asked Leardini—who is also Coordinator of the National Group for the Effective External Control of Police Activities of the National Council of States Attorneys—in light of his experience as a civil police precinct chief and as a prosecutor in charge of police oversight what he felt it would take to do a similarly thorough oversight job in Rio, with its high rates of police abuse. He estimated that one prosecutor equipped with two field investigators, one forensic doctor, and another forensic expert could, with difficulty, conduct 10 good investigations per month.[441] This calculation led him to say that, in the case of Rio, the work required “a task force of 50 or 60 men counting on independent forensic institutes,” adding, “in an endemic case like Rio de Janeiro, if the investigations are not done by the MP [State Prosecutor’s Office], you can forget about it.”[442]

The Rio attorney general readily endorsed the idea of creating such a group, stating “this is what we want.”[443] The human rights deputy assistant attorney general for Rio thought that a special prosecutorial unit designated to review police “resistance” killings should exist, saying it would be “important.”[444] The São Paulo attorney general, along with his two chief human rights advisers, accepted that an action group focused on police violence could exist, and promised to study the possibility of creating one.[445] As Eduardo Días de Souza Ferreira, a human rights aide to the São Paulo attorney general, noted, such a group would address the current “fragmented” nature of police oversight efforts in the office.[446] Several other state officials concurred that such a group would be valuable.[447]

Given these considerations, Human Rights Watch recommends that the relevant state authorities take the following steps to curb police impunity, deter future police abuses, and strengthen public security in Rio and São Paulo:

I. Establish Special Prosecutorial Units for Police Killing Cases

To the Attorneys General of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo

• The state prosecutors’ offices of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo should create permanent specialized prosecutorial teams dedicated to systematically reviewing and leading investigations into killings by police officers, particularly those carried out in alleged self-defense. Prosecutors need the proper resources to do this job, which likely entails strengthening the GAP unit within the Rio state prosecutor’s office and the relatively small investigatory unit in the São Paulo state prosecutor’s office. The new special units should regularly publish reports detailing their performance in individual cases, in impacting the problem of police violence as a whole, and in serving as an alternate public channel for complaints against the police.
• Institutional efforts aimed at curbing police criminal gangs need to be strengthened and prioritized. In Rio de Janeiro, the recently formed prosecutorial anti-organized crime nucleus should be granted the resources and authority it needs to fulfill its mandate, and it should regularly publish an accounting of its performance in order to promote public accountability. In addition, the attorney general should endorse the creation of a multi-institutional Chamber for the Repression of Organized Crime, as proposed by the state legislature’s CPI report on militias. In São Paulo, the push to combat organized crime within the police forces should include ensuring that investigations into death squad activities be made a priority within a suitable prosecutorial special action group, such as GAECO.
• State prosecutors should lead a systematic review of all alleged resistance killings committed since at least 2003 in areas and/or by units where the data strongly suggests a high number of executions. The review should focus on gathering evidence of extrajudicial executions, false rescues, investigatory failures, and instances of prosecutorial neglect. Where misconduct is found, the agents responsible should be criminally and administratively sanctioned accordingly. At a minimum, this review should encompass:
  • All alleged “resistance” killings by civil and military police in Rio’s 10 Integrated Public Security Areas with the highest numbers of reported police killings (Areas 3, 7, 9, 12, 14, 15, 16, 20, 22, 40); and
  • All alleged “resistance” killings by military police units in São Paulo within the shock troop command (especially the ROTA), the capital policing command, and the metropolitan policing command for the period in question.

II. Ensure the Success of Special Prosecutorial Units

To the Attorney Generals of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo

• Police cover ups of extrajudicial executions should be investigated and prosecuted vigorously. Deterring potential cover ups is a key way of deterring abuses generally. There may be cases in which it is possible to prove a crime of obstruction of justice—such as procedural fraud or threat—even if evidence regarding the homicide is harder to obtain.

To the Governors of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo

• A team of police investigators should be detailed to the State Prosecutor’s Offices’ new specialized units on police killings cases. These police investigators should be selected by and exclusively answerable to the prosecutors’ offices rather than the normal police hierarchy.
• Police institutions should be instructed to notify the competent prosecutor (known as the promotor natural) as well as the human rights prosecutorial officers within the State Prosecutor’s Office of each police killing case as soon as they first learn of it.
• Police institutions should be instructed to conduct specialized inquiries into possible procedural fraud in all alleged “resistance” killings in which shooting victims are delivered dead by police at hospitals. Copies of all documents regarding such investigations should be regularly forwarded to the relevant police ombudsman’s office and to state legislative human rights commissions.
• Police institutions should be instructed to cooperate fully with state prosecutors, including special units working on police abuse, such as allowing them access to necessary documentation and evidence without delay and ensuring that they can promptly conduct interviews with officers implicated in cases as witnesses or potential suspects.
• Protocols on proper police procedure for dealing with injured police shooting victims at crime scenes should be studied, reformed, and published. Potential models include state transportation agency protocols on best practices in responding to car collision victims. The aforementioned 2009 São Gonçalo agreement, mandating, inter alia, that police call competent medical professionals to assist with injured victims, is another potential model. Failures to abide by the new protocols should be investigated and disciplined. Any reform should be the product of a truly consultative process, which could be conducted, for example, by the state legislative human rights commissions.

To the Federal and Regional Medical Councils

• Policies designed to systematically identify, track, document, and report on deliveries of corpses by the police to hospitals should be adopted and implemented.
  • Medical personnel involved in the receipt of bodies from police at hospitals should be trained to ensure that the new monitoring system is carried out safely and successfully. Personnel should also receive training in the safeguarding of forensic evidence, including the rule that the garments of victims of potential homicides should not be discarded.

III. Additional Measures to Curb Police Abuse and Impunity

To the Governors of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo

• Police internal affairs divisions must be ensured greater autonomy and should operate with greater transparency. The heads of internal affairs divisions should not be police officers, should be appointed with input from civil society, and should be removable only for cause. An independent career track should exist for officers working at internal affairs units. Internal affairs units should systematically track police violence allegations and publish disaggregated statistics on the number of complaints received, cases investigated, investigatory steps taken, and accountability results achieved. Internal affairs files and initiatives should be regularly made readily available for full review by state prosecutors and police ombudsman’s offices, particularly in cases of alleged serious abuse.

To the Security Secretaries of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo

• All alleged resistance killings in which shooting victims are delivered dead by police at hospitals should be the subject of specialized internal affairs inquiries to determine whether proper crime scene procedure was followed.
• Civil police internal affairs units should conduct a specialized review of the investigatory sufficiency of all inquiries into alleged resistance killings. Minimum investigatory standards must be upheld, such as ensuring documentation of crime scenes and in-depth immediate interviews of all officers involved in fatal shootings. The 1991 United Nations Manual on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-Legal, Arbitrary, and Summary Executions provides a model for investigations of police extrajudicial executions. Flaws and omissions on the part of investigators should be corrected and misconduct disciplined.

To the Governors and Legislatures of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo

• Forensics institutes should be given effective autonomy, assured a secure appropriate budget, and granted the safeguards necessary for the maintenance of independence. They should be removed from the police apparatus and instead report to a state entity not answerable to the police hierarchy.
• Standard operating procedures detailing specific investigatory steps that must be undertaken in police shooting cases should be adopted and published; the process should include meaningful public consultation before the procedures are finalized.

To the Police Ombudsmen of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo

• Attention should be (or continue to be, in the case of São Paulo) focused on police violence cases, especially cases of homicide and torture. The ombudsman’s offices should continuously monitor the prevalence of such serious abuses and the efficacy of police administrative and criminal investigative bodies in responding to them. The offices should also keep statistics on criminal charges, convictions, sentencing, and implementation of sentencing in cases where there is credible evidence of police abuse.

To the Attorney General of Brazil

• The Federal Prosecutors’ Office should take a more active role in ensuring that individual rights are respected by Brazilian state and local police forces. This entails, at a minimum, regularly seeking to federalize (moving the investigation and prosecution of cases into the federal justice system) egregious police abuse cases that have failed to progress at the state investigatory or prosecutorial phases, such as the 2007 Complexo do Alemão case and the São Paulo Parque Bristol death squad killings from May 2006. If state prosecutors’ offices fail to create an effective monitoring system for all police killing cases, federal prosecutors should exercise jurisdiction in key cases, consistent with their powers under Brazilian law, and conduct thorough investigations, seeking assistance as appropriate from the Federal Police through the office of the justice minister.

To the National Council of Prosecutors’ Offices

• The duty of state prosecutors’ offices to fulfill their task of providing “external control of police activities” should be the subject of heightened scrutiny. The National Council should demand periodic public reports from state offices listing their charge and conviction rates in police abuse cases along with an explanation for the rates. It should also requisition a sample of alleged resistance cases from states each year and conduct an evaluation of the performance of prosecutors in the cases, issuing commendations and calling for disciplinary measures as appropriate. The National Council should also monitor the performance of the Federal Prosecutors’ Office, requesting periodic public reports regarding state and local police abuse cases in which federal prosecutors chose to intervene and evaluating their selection of and performance in such cases.

To the Federal Special Secretariat for Human Rights

• The Secretariat should create a permanent federal forensics team specializing in the investigation of human rights crimes. The team could conduct direct examinations or review the performance of state-level forensics investigators, as occurred in the Complexo do Alemão case.

To the President of Brazil and the National Congress

• Brazil’s president should link the disbursement of federal funds for state programs in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo to strict benchmarks mandating a sharp reduction in on- and off-duty killings by police officers, with particular attention to “resistance” killings by police. The statistics should be made public and be periodically audited by an independent expert agency.
• Federal police involvement in efforts to counter militias and death squads should be increased, particularly when and where states are unwilling or unable to address the problem.