Citizens believe military police involved in massacres
Police Operation in São Paulo 
In the early hours of September 19, four delivery boys were killed outside the pizza place where they worked, in Carapicuíba, São Paulo. On October 24, a military police officer was charged with the crimes and arrested.
The São Paulo Secretariat for Public Security said police agent Douglas Gomes was seeking revenge for a robbery during which these youths had allegedly attacked his wife. In the house of one of the young men killed, the officer's wife's purse was found. The three youths had been wanted by the police for thefts in the area.
In another case, an officer and a former military police agent are being tried for the deaths of eight people at the headquarters of Pavilhão Nove, the fan club of Corinthians, the state's most famous football team. Suspicions of police involvement in massacres also arose between January and July this year in São Paulo and neighboring cities.
“Vigilantes are out there and the State won't admit it,” said a relative of one of the eight victims in the Pavilhão Nove massacre, who requested not to be named.
Guaracy Mingardi, former National Undersecretary for Public Security and member of the Brazilian Public Security Forum, says there is no doubt the so-called extermination groups really exist. He explains that, in the 90's, when São Paulo was “the land of slaughter”, there were two groups: the massacres perpetrated as part of conflicts between drug spots and the ones carried out by the extermination groups.
Disputes over drug spots, he says, waned after the PCC, the state's biggest criminal organization, took control of most of the trafficking. Other mass killings are perpetrated by extermination groups, aided by some law enforcement agent. “Cases settled over the last years have shown it,” Mingardi added.
Modus operandi
Camila Nunes Dias, Phd in Sociology and a professor at the Federal University of the ABC, says that the massacres reported in the state cast light on practices associated with “ordinary” criminals. In her view, there is a pattern: “People often convene riding one or several motorbikes or driving one or several cars, their faces covered with a hood or otherwise, in some cases subduing victims by turning them so they face the wall, on their knees, or just shooting them in the head.”
This approach, the sociologist says, is different from how the PCC operates: they seek a way to legitimate their power over certain neighborhood by attempting to conceal the use of physical force, especially in cases of murder. PCC's victims, she explains, are chiefly informants, debtors, and security agents, and also suspects of sexual crimes or violence against children.
Luiz Carlos dos Santos, councilor and rapporteur from the police violence commission at the State Council for the Defense of the Rights of the Human Person (Condepe), reports that the agency is currently looking into 21 massacre cases in the state. In them, no signs of involvement by PCC members as masterminds of the crimes have been found.
Summary executions
Professor Camila Nunes notes that, in 2006, in response to the attacks staged by the PCC, which targeted 80 police, the Military Police brought the death toll to some 500 in a week. “Ever since then, a very typical pattern has been formed: summary executions, with multiple victims, perpetrated in the same area not long after an officer is killed,” she said.
Condepe chairman Rildo Marques remarks that all massacres this year were preceded by the killing of a police agent. “This retaliation doesn't seem groundless. There seem to be an interest in protecting under-the-counter businesses, and that should be brought under the close scrutiny of São Paulo authorities,” Marques added.
A document from the Military Police Internal Affairs Office on the investigation into the 19 deaths in the cities of Osasco and Barueri, São Paulo, perused by Agência Brasil, reports that the case involved “a group organized to perpetrate crimes of homicide with the clear intention of revenge.”
In a recent interview with news outlets, São Paulo Governor Geraldo Alckmin questioned the existence of extermination groups. The problem, he claims, is “bad police.”
Making it federal
During a Condepe meeting last week in São Paulo, relatives of victims and representatives from social movements and human rights groups discussed ways of urging the state government to take responsibility for the mass killings. Valuing transparency, swiftness, and law enforcement, the group also called for the involvement of the Federal Police in the crackdown.
The concern of families is voiced by the Regional Office for South America of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). “It's crucial that the extrajudicial executions be brought under investigation by an agency independent from São Paulo's Military Police. This is the only way to prevent the ones responsible from going unpunished,” argued Amerigo Incalcaterra, spokesman from the OHCHR.
The Secretariat for Public Security told Agência Brasil it would make no comment about whether or not the Federal Police could take part in the investigations. The Justice Ministry, under whose authority the Federal Police operate, declared that such crimes fall under the responsibility of the police at state level.
Translated by Fabrício Ferreira
Fonte: Citizens believe military police involved in massacres
