The Secretary of Public Security of São Paulo, Guilherme Derrite, stated this Tuesday (2) that he did not know the number of deaths in Operation Verão, which ended on Monday (1st).
“I didn’t even know there were 56”, said the head of the secretariat in the administration Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicans). “Unfortunately there are 56, for me the ideal is that there wouldn’t be even one.”
The operation is the second most lethal in the history of the São Paulo Military Police, behind only the Carandiru massacre, which left 111 dead during the invasion of the House of Detention in 1992.
Derrite’s statement was made during an agenda with the mayor of the capital of São Paulo, Ricardo Nunes (MDB), who began the delegated operation with agents from the Fire Department.
The project follows the “official side gig” model of police officers who patrol during their day off. In this case, firefighters will work at Samu (Mobile Emergency Care Service) and pruning trees.
According to Derrite, police officers are at risk due to negligence in combating organized crime in Brazil and São Paulo. “It has reached a point where if a police vehicle enters a certain community in Baixada Santista, you will suffer gunshots. What can I say, police officers are real-life heroes.”
When asked about the deaths, the head of the SSP (Public Security Secretariat) also mentioned dead and injured police officers again.
“You mentioned 56, but perhaps you forgot to mention the police officers who died carrying out their mission. We lost soldiers Cosmo and Patrick Reis, Corporal Silveira, Sergeant Guilherme, who lost an eye and was hospitalized. This is real life, not the utopian world of ‘look, there were x number of deaths'”, said the secretary.
Operation Summer began in December and was extended for a second phase in February, after the death of soldier Samuel Wesley Cosmo. The announcement of the end of the action was made days after the death of Edneia Fernandes Silva, 31, mother of six children who was studying to be a nurse, shot during a police action in Santos.
The escalation of deaths on the coast of São Paulo has resulted in a series of criticisms of the police’s actions, including a complaint to the UN Human Rights Council (United Nations) presented last month by Conectas Human Rights and the Arns Commission.
When asked about the topic at the time, the governor stated that he “doesn’t care” about allegations of abuse committed during Operation Summer.
