In northeastern Brazil, the government of the state of Paraíba is committed to Community Policing.
“We’re making arrests in the most violent areas in order to be able to occupy these locations and allow Community Policing to come in and do its job,” says Cláudio Lima, the secretary of public safety and social defense in Paraíba.
Community Policing will be an essential part of the fight against narco-trafficking, Lima says.
“João Pessoa [capital of Paraíba] is a major city with several pockets of poverty, where there’s widespread occurrence of small and medium-scale drug trafficking, which we’re going to vigorously combat,” Lima says.
Paraíba ranks third with the most firearm-related homicides among Brazil’s 27 states, according to a survey published by the National Federation of Municipalities on May 5.
Of the total number of homicides in Paraíba, 80.5% were committed with firearms, trailing only the states of Alagoas (83.5%) and Bahia (81.3%).
The government of Paraíba wants to turn these figures around by establishing pacifying police forces within its communities.
“We’re going to implement Community Policing in more neighborhoods throughout the year,” Lima says. “But we can’t specify exactly how many, because we first want to ensure that the foundation has been securely established, particularly in Mandacaru, before we open new fronts.”
The goal is to train 450 police officers in Community Policing by the end of October, bringing the total of law enforcement agents stationed in the João Pessoa metropolitan area to more than 1,000.
“We want to spread this philosophy, demonstrating both the importance and the need for this new practice, because community policing can be more effective in recognizing the problems of the community and its residents,” says Col. Marcos Alexandre de Oliveira Lima Sobreira, the state’s coordinator of Community Policing. (Read more)
Dilma Rousseff was herself tortured by the military regime after being imprisoned for her activities with left-wing radicals resisting the dictatorship in the 1970s Photo: AFP/GETTY
Brazil’s new government has signalled its intention to press ahead with a controversial ‘truth commission’ to investigate abuses by the country’s former military dictatorship.
Days after President Dilma Rousseff was sworn in as Brazil’s first female leader, her Secretary of Human Rights said that such a commission would help to “consolidate democracy“.
Ms Rousseff was herself tortured by the military regime – which considered her “the Joan of Arc of subversion” – after being imprisoned for her activities with left-wing radicals resisting the dictatorship in the 1970s.
The idea of a truth commission caused splits in the cabinet of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whose eight years as president came to an end on New Year’s Day, and led senior military figures to threaten to resign.
But Maria do Rosario, Brazil’s Secretary of Human Rights, asked the country’s Congress to approve the idea in her first speech in her post.
“We must do this for the families of those who were killed or disappeared,” she said.
Brazil is the only country in Latin America not to have investigated deaths and torture which took place under its dictatorship. (more…)
