Ceará Committee for the Demilitarization of the Police and Politics

The project looks to intensify the debate over the demilitarization of the police, producing materials in favor of the measure, promoting public events related to the topic, involving communities in outlying urban areas, class entities, students and other collectives.

– Accompaniment of cases of police violence, calling on the relevant institutions to investigate the facts and hold the offending parties responsible;

– Publicizing and promoting debates on the Constitutional Amendment Proposals (PECs) that seek police reform, including demilitarization;

– A Popular Seminar with committees from throughout the country, aimed to make a greater national coordination effort possible for debating and elaborating campaign strategies;

– Systematic visits to outlying urban communities, especially schools, with materials about the issue (pamphlets), to stimulate involvement and engagement;

– Contact with entities representing the victims; community movements; associations / trade unions of workers in the security industry, in order to promote a synergy and their entrance in the Committee.

Public safety policy and its concrete manifestation should be to the benefit of the population, assuring rights and freedoms. Brazil is one of few countries with a military police sharing the cycle of police activity, rupturing the logic of investigation and increasing costs. In the country, only 8% of homicides are attributed and prosecuted. Militarism places the police against the citizenry, reproducing an endless war, distancing possible civil alliances and leading to the utilization of techniques such as torture and summary executions. Internally, police officers are not seen by their superiors as workers with rights and initiatives. This dehumanization includes hazing, brutality during training sessions and even the use of incentives for practicing selective and racist violence.

The Brazilian police is one of the most lethal in the world: according to the Brazilian Public Safety Yearbook (2013), 1,890 people died in 2012 in confrontations with the police. In São Paulo, studies presented by the Sou da Paz Institute revealed that 93% of deaths caused by the Military Police occurred in outlying urban neighborhoods. The deaths, violence and daily humiliation demonstrate what is truly a presumption of guilt on the basis of social, economic or geographical characteristics that supposedly indicate danger, a process which is understood as selective criminalization and perpetrated by State agents. Understandably, 70% of the population does not trust the police who ought to protect them.

The Ceará Committee for the Demilitarization of the Police and Politics looks to combat institutional violence by the police by confronting one of its principal factors: militarism.

The Committee is affiliated with the network of committees for the demilitarization of the police and politics.

The committee is established as an important umbrella organization of different collectives and movements that, directly or indirectly, discuss and take action on public safety, constantly being invited to discuss the issue with various segments of the countryside and city. The project allowed for communication activities to be arranged as well as critical and insightful information to be produced; debates to be held; publications; school activities; articulating public policies and monitoring cases. One of the highlights was the publication of a pamphlet on the demilitarization of the police and politics, instructional material distributed as part of the committee’s activities.