POLITICS-BRAZIL: Police Crisis Puts Military on the Beat

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 25 2001 (IPS) - The civil and military police are protesting in several cities throughout Brazil, demanding salary hikes of as much as 41 percent, while some are enlisting their spouses to take part in the demonstrations.

The succession of police strikes has already forced the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso to deploy the armed forces to maintain order in the northern state of Tocantins, in May, and this month in Bahia, in the northeast.

The Cardoso administration and other government authorities are debating a decree that would allow the military to take over police functions in these emergency situations, according to an announcement this week in Brasilia by Gen. Alberto Cardoso, chief of the Institutional Security Cabinet of the Presidency.

Meanwhile, President Cardoso convened a meeting for Thursday with ministers related to public security in order to draw up a strategy to contain the deterioration of the police system itself.

The authorities fear repeats of the violent incidents of 1997, when police in 12 of Brazil’s 27 states declared a strike that triggered clashes, extensive material damages – and the death of one person in the southern state of Minas Gerais.

This year’s protest movement, begun in May with the paralysis of police activity in Tocantins, has taken on a variety of forms, though all reflect demands for higher salaries and improved working conditions.

In Tocantins, the military police (MPs) shut themselves in the barracks with their families and fought off pressure from the armed forces, which reached the point of threatening an attack with tanks and heavy weapons.

In Bahia, both the military and civil police engaged in a 13- day strike that ended July 17.

The total absence of security forces on the streets meant that Salvador, Bahia’s capital, was reigned by violence and fear, thrashed by a wave of armed attacks and the looting of local businesses. The number of murders during that period was three times the normal daily average.

The climate of terror prompted the state government to ask the armed forces to take over public safety responsibilities. In the end, officials reached an agreement with the strikers, offering a wage increase of 21 percent, versus the 35 percent the police had demanded.

In the southern state of Paraná, the spouses of the military police took the initiative, and have been mobilised since June. The women at one point blocked the entrance to the police barracks, forcing a strike in demand of a 38-percent wage hike.

Meanwhile, the Reserve Officers Association of the military police in Sao Paulo decided to adopt a similar tactic. Wives, daughters and widows are to receive training to engage in protests, occupy barracks and confront dangerous situations, reported the association’s vice-president, Col. Hermes Cruz.

In a street protest Tuesday in Sao Paulo, military and civil police demanded a salary increase of 41 percent, rejecting the government offer of six to 10 percent.

In Alagoas and Pernambuco, two northeastern states, strikes have been occurring for more than a week. And in addition to Sao Paulo, the states of Pará and Rio Grande do Sul are also under threat of a paralysis of their military police forces.

Brazil’s justice authorities consider protests by the MPs to be illegal because they are a military force.

But the wage problem is most concentrated among the military police forces, as their salaries vary from the equivalent of 150 dollars a month in Alagoas to four times that in Brasilia. In all cases the pay scale is considered low for the type of work they perform and for the dangerous situations they must confront.

Due to their low incomes, police are often forced to live in poor neighbourhoods and in ‘favelas’ (illegal slum settlements), where they must keep their work secret from their neighbours for fear of violent reprisals.

Sao Paulo’s MPs have the highest suicide rate in the country, and drug use is rampant throughout the force.

The government, in addition to worrying about the police strikes – which undermine discipline and break the chain of command, say officials -, must also deal with a wave of attacks, kidnappings and extortion committed by MPs, particularly in Rio de Janeiro.

During Brazil’s military dictatorship (1964-1985), the state MPs were under the command of army generals, an alternative that is being debated today as a way to quash the current police protests and strikes.

But for now, says Gen. Cardoso, the authorities are focussing on the possibility of granting police power to the members of the armed forces so that they can detain suspected criminals when they are called out to establish public order.