COVID-19, POLICING AND (ANTI)FASCISM IN BRAZIL
Resumo
The death of poor black teenagers – such as João Pedro, shot 70 times by police officers on May 18, 2020 in São Gonçalo, Rio de Janeiro – once again opened the Pandora’s box of Brazil’s justice apparatus, specifically in its main cities. Due to recurring controversial cases of the police posing an additional danger to the population in Covid-19 times, on the 100th day of the epidemic Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court created an injunction prohibiting police operations in poor communities in Rio de Janeiro. The police are subordinate to the state governments, but due to the country’s current political chaos, the Supreme Federal Court has taken the lead in many decisions, moving into the crosshairs of criticism from the executive powers. This time, the court decreed that police operations can only take place in "absolutely exceptional cases", following requests to the Public Ministry from governors and police commanders for exceptional action. In a follow-up report on the first two weeks of the judicial order’s effect, it was estimated that the decrease in police operations in Rio’s favelas and the subsequent decrease in shootings saved 18 lives in just 15 days (Hirata et al. 2020). This decision highlights the unsustainability of violent policing policies, in a time that demands precisely the opposite, that is the protection of the most vulnerable populations, with structural support for survival, and the reduction of threats to life. There will always be those who defend police as a part of a social order to be preserved. Many scholars understand policing to involve the maintenance of the status quo. If the status quo is a racist, violent, and usurping one, as it is in most places, then the same applies to policing. But in urban contexts such as those in Brazil, in which democracy is led by authoritarian governments that wage war on the population and state institutions, police violence gains new contours, overtly displaying racist, radical right-wing and discriminatory tendencies. In authoritarian regimes, white supremacists come out of the closet, in a clear fashion and with state support
Membros
