A-Infos (en) Brazil, OSL, Libera #182 - THE 'FORA DERRITE' CAMPAIGN AND THE TRUE ROLE OF THE POLICE IN CAPITALISM (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Public security policy in the state of São Paulo is experiencing an 
escalation in police violence. In 2024, police lethality increased 65% 
compared to the previous year. Brutal cases, such as the one involving a 
man thrown from a bridge by a police officer, or the invasion of a 
funeral in Bauru, demonstrate that the state considers the majority of 
the population its enemy. At the center of this repressive machinery is 
Public Security Secretary Guilherme Derrite-a former member of the Rota 
party, a Bolsonaro supporter, and the perpetrator of the massacres on 
the São Paulo coast. His continued presence is unsustainable. Therefore, 
movements and collectives have created the Fora Derrite campaign in the 
state.
But it is important to remember that police violence is not a deviation; 
it is part of the logic of the capitalist-statist system. The police 
were not created to fight crime, but as a tool of social control. In 
England and the United States, between 1825 and 1855, the modern police 
force emerged as a response to urban riots, workers' strikes, and slave 
uprisings-not to rising crime. The bourgeoisie needed to contain the 
collective action of the working class and discipline the new urban 
workforce. Hence the central function of the police: to act against the 
oppressed masses.
That's why the police kill. They kill Ryan, a 4-year-old child, with a 
shot in Santos. They kill Manuela, a persecuted teenager. They kill 
Gabriel Renan, Victória Manoelly, and Marco Aurélio. They carry out the 
so-called Operations Shield and Summer, carried out on the coast of São 
Paulo, with executions, concealment of bodies, and falsification of 
evidence. These are no exception. They are victims of a security policy 
that acts as a war against Black and peripheral people. In Brazil, this 
pattern is historic. Whether in São Paulo, led by Bolsonaro supporters, 
Bahia, governed by the Workers' Party (PT), or Rio de Janeiro, governed 
by the so-called centrão (centrão), militarization is the rule-and 
punishment for murderous police officers is almost nonexistent.
Meanwhile, femicides are breaking records, women's safety is neglected, 
and crimes like theft and assault are on the rise. Police are caught 
acting for organized crime-as in the case of military police officers 
and police chiefs involved in drug trafficking in Cracolândia. The 
so-called "war on drugs," which fuels these massacres, has failed as a 
policy and triumphs as a mechanism of social control. Instead of 
attacking large-scale drug trafficking, it attacks Black youth. Instead 
of confronting the capital that profits from money laundering, it 
represses those living in the periphery.
The creation of the modern police force in London, after the Peterloo 
Massacre (1819), responded precisely to the need to contain large-scale 
popular demonstrations without producing martyrs. The role of the police 
was-and still is-to ensure the social order imposed by those above. 
Repression is not a diversion, it is a project. The police repress 
strikes, demonstrations, and any attempt at independent organization by 
the working class.
In the past, and in various forms of social organizations today, 
autonomous communities resolved and resolved conflicts through mutual 
responsibility. Without police, but rather through collective forms of 
justice. With the advance of capitalism and the growth of cities, the 
State began to centralize control over the population. This is where the 
modern police force was born: to repress, monitor, and demobilize.
Today, in Brazil, we see the militarization of Civil and Municipal 
Guards, the political use of repression, and the "prisômetro" 
(prisômetro) as criminal marketing (the prisômetro is an LED panel in 
São Paulo that displays arrests made in the city in real time, focusing 
on Smart Sampa, a camera system with facial recognition). All of this 
strengthens the criminalization of poverty. Derrite's role in this 
process is central, but not individual. Therefore, saying "Out with 
Derrite" opens a dispute over meaning: for a different security policy 
and a different social project.

The fight for justice involves remembering the victims, denouncing the 
murderers, and organizing the peripheries. It's time to break the cycle 
of massacres. Derrite must fall. And with it, the entire logic of war 
against the people. May solidarity, popular self-defense, and collective 
power rise up against state terror.

https://socialismolibertario.net/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Subscribe/Unsubscribe https://ainfos.ca/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
Archive: http://ainfos.ca/en