The Dangerous Radicalization of the Police
Carolina Ricardo, a lawyer and sociologist, is the executive director of the Sou da Paz Institute. Samira Bueno is executive director of the Brazilian Public Security Forum. This article was originally published in issue 86 of the Quatro Cinco Um magazine, and kindly provided for reproduction in the WBO weekly bulletin. To read the original version, click on the link.
On October 30, 2022, the date of the second round of the highly contested presidential election, the Federal Highway Police (FHP) carried out a series of blitzes on the country's highways. The practical effect of these operations was to make it difficult for voters to exercise their right to vote. The most curious thing is that most of them took place in the Northeast region, which was home to voters of then-candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. At least 610 buses transporting voters were stopped that day, almost 50% of them in the region.
In the investigation carried out by the Federal Police in August 2023, evidence was found that the blitzes were directed at Lula's voters. The Federal Police located conversations regarding a meeting of the FHP leadership, in which Silvinei Vasques, then the FHP director-general, had ordered “targeted policing” on the day of the second round in cities in the Northeast where Lula had received more than 75% of the votes in the first round. Vasques had expressed on social media the day before his preference for the reelection of candidate Jair Bolsonaro.
The investigation culminated in the arrest of the PRF director-general, which was maintained until August 2024, when Vasques was released by decision of Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, with the condition that he had to wear an electronic ankle bracelet and was prohibited from leaving the country.
The political actions of the security forces went beyond the operations of the Federal Highway Police. They were also present in the attacks on the headquarters of the three branches of government located at the Three Powers Square on January 8, 2023, demonstrating the way members of the Armed Forces and Military Police of the Federal District acted. Investigations on several fronts pointed to strong evidence of negligence on the part of the Federal District Military Police in the invasion, and resulted in the arrests of its general commander, Klepter Rosa Gonçalves, and six other officers. According to the investigations, the police officers did not act to prevent the vandalism due to their ideological alignment with the coup plotters and even tried to hinder the investigation of the criminal acts. The Brazilian army was also accused of negligence in the face of pro-Bolsonaro forces that camped out in front of the army headquarters in Brasília. People were there for 69 days. Pro-coup banners calling for military intervention were frequently seen there.
Undue politicization
These two scenes — elections and January 8, 2023 — illustrate the culmination of a long process of radicalization of the security forces, both the Armed Forces and the police. They also result from a process of erosion of democratic institutions that had erupted years earlier. The beginning of what can be considered a backlash occurred in 2013, during the June Protests, which, although they began around the Free Fare Movement, ended up spilling over and culminating in sectors of society taking to the streets to reject the political system as a whole. Then there were demonstrations surrounding the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff in 2015 and 2016, with then-federal deputy Bolsonaro dedicating his pro-impeachment vote to the memory of Colonel Ustra, a famous torturer and head of the repressive agency during the worst years of the dictatorship. These same forces were involved with the “digital warriors” of Bolsonarism (the apt expression coined by journalist Marcelo Godoy) from 2018 onwards, with recurring political demonstrations on social networks by members of the armed forces. Finally, the process of radicalization took hold during the Bolsonaro government, which explored a new type of accommodation with the Armed Forces in power. This amalgamation between the Armed Forces and politics is discussed in the previous article in this series: “Deradicalizing the Armed Forces,” written by Adriana Marques and Lucas Rezende, published in August. But the problem extends to all institutions that hold a monopoly on force.
Democracy is seriously undermined when security forces, driven by politics and ideology, work blatantly to harm one candidate and favor another, as well as when they wash their hands of the imminent threat of a coup. The politicization and radicalization of these forces occurs in different dimensions. There is more underway.
The Brazilian Congress is populated by representatives of the security forces. This presence increased by about 35% in the 2022 elections, with 38 federal congressional representatives elected from among the security forces, including three army officers. In 2018, there were 28 individuals. In 2010, there were only four. In the 2020 municipal elections, defense and security professionals won fifty mayoral positions and 809 seats in municipal chambers.
The Sou da Paz Institute called this phenomenon a policing movement. Its characteristics have become well-known: police strikes, police celebrities on social media, the growth of militias, and the participation of agents in elections. A study published in 2021 by the Brazilian Public Security Forum showed that almost a third of Brazilian police officers interacted with antidemocratic content on social media, compared to only 17% of the total population.
It is a dangerous process because, on the one hand, an excessively ideologically influenced police force worsens the quality of the service provided to the population, as it moves away from strict compliance with legal obligations by adopting strategies for political and personal promotion. On the other hand, a significant proportion of parliamentarians with police training view public safety in an undemocratic way: unshakable belief in the power of excessive use of force, heavy-handed police operations (generally targeting Black and impoverished populations), and adherence to simplistic solutions to combat violence.
The result is equally serious. Leaders are campaigning politically inside the barracks or on social media. For example, it was news that the ombudsman of the São Paulo Military Police, Colonel Fábio Sérgio do Amaral, spoke out on social media against federal congressman Guilherme Boulos (Party of Socialism and Liberty, PSOL-SP), a candidate for mayor of São Paulo. In 2018, uniformed officers, also from the São Paulo Military Police, were caught supporting Bolsonaro during the presidential campaign. At the same time, political discourse with a security bias often focuses on a radical disrespect for human rights, the use of social media by influencers who celebrate deaths committed by police officers, which is a combination of the extrapolation of political freedom and the spectacularization of public security that encourages and favors violent practices.
Shameful and dangerous
It is common for these pro-military and polices forces in Congress to promote elected figures who are characterized by their aggressiveness, as was the case of Congressman Éder Mauro (Liberal Party, PL-PA), known for admitting, in the middle of a session, while addressing left-wing deputies: "I, unfortunately, have killed, not a few, no, a lot of people. All criminals. I wish you were here to discuss it face to face." The tendency to disengage from serious and sustainable public security policies has been hegemonic in Congress, in addition to the adherence to solutions that do not solve the problems of violence or the feeling of insecurity because of the expansion of the use of new forms of repressive measures, the hardening of criminal legislation and the legitimization of violence as solutions. A motion that praised Elon Musk, the owner of X, is symbolic, following the escalation of the businessman's criticism of Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. The motion was approved in April 2024 by the Public Security Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, Brazil’s lower house, at the request of Congressman Coronel Meira (Liberal Party, PL-PE). In early September, Congressman Captain Alden (Liberal Party, PL-BA), a captain in the Bahia Military Police who describes himself as a “patriot, anti-communist, gun supporter and close to Bolsonaro”, sent a request for a motion of repudiation to the Sou da Paz Institute, in response to the organization's efforts against the excessive support for civilians’ access to weapons.
Among the congressional legislators from the security forces, we see a histrionic debate, fueled by fear and disrespect for the rule of law. Examples such as that of Guilherme Derrite, a congressman on leave who is the secretary of Public Security for São Paulo, and Paulo Bilynskyj, a federal congressman from São Paulo and a digital influencer, show the magnitude of the risk of this type of involvement. The behavior, values, and actions of the police with this view undermine the prospect of technical, professional, and democratic policing. In addition to worsening public security, they also threaten democracy.
It is worth remembering that Derrite was the one who once said that it was “shameful” for a police officer not to have at least “three incidents” of homicide in five years of service. Bilynskyj had his dismissal approved by the Superior Council of the Civil Police after posting a video on social media in defense of rape and racism, in addition to being the owner of a shooting club, a fact that he failed to mention to the Federal Electoral Court (TSE) . It is this type of politicized police culture that dominates, for example, the Public Security and Combating Organized Crime Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, where more than half are from Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party.
This radicalized vision is taken to extremes when such leaders take up positions in the executive nranch. This is when the risks go beyond symbolism and the verbal violence of the digital environment and reaches practical effects. It is also the opposite of what is expected of good public security policies and democracies worthy of the name.
Revolving door
It is not easy to think of ways to deradicalize the security forces, but there are possibilities. The first aspect is to better regulate the electoral participation of candidates from the police force. According to current legislation, police chiefs are required to take four to six months off, depending on the elected office they are running for. For civil police officers, it is three months, regardless of the position. In the case of the Military Police, for police officers without a command position, the Federal Electoral Court’s case law allows them to remain in office until the application for registration of the candidacy is filed with the Electoral Court, which, in the 2020 municipal election, occurred only 49 days before the election. In addition, the legislation allows military personnel with more than ten years of service to return to their forces in the event of electoral defeat, creating the so-called “revolving door”, with politics invading the barracks.
Countries such as Chile, England, the United States, France, Portugal, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, and Bolivia have rules to prevent active police officers or military personnel from running for office, which is partly due to the institutional experiences of these countries, which see the politicization of law enforcement institutions as a threat to democracy.
In light of this situation, it is important to establish a standardized quarantine period that eliminates the risk of conflict of interests between the police officer candidate and the one working in public security. Considering the proximity of the elections, it is possible to mobilize the Electoral Public Prosecutors' Offices to monitor the use of their own activities in public security for partisan purposes, in addition to monitoring the rule that prohibits advertising using uniforms and other police symbols for electoral purposes.
Another important path is to regulate the use of social media by active police officers, with the consequent monitoring of this use by police institutions. The São Paulo Military Police issued a resolution at the end of 2021 prohibiting police officers from posting images of the police’s physical facilities, weapons, uniforms, vehicles, or equipment on their social media or sharing them on messaging apps, as well as from disclosing police operations or investigations. Also at the end of 2021, the Federal Police’s internal affairs department sent a report to all units reminding them that police officers can be punished for using emblems or the Federal Police’s institutional image on social media. It remains to be seen whether and how these rules are implemented by the institutions themselves.
These are some proposals to strengthen more immediate control over the excessive politicization of the police, without changing the existing institutional framework. They are essential measures, however, to organize the electoral participation of candidates representing the organizations that hold the legitimate monopoly on the use of force. This would be an excellent start if we want to democratize the police and public security in Brazil.
