Banks
destroyed, bomb treats at bus stops and airports, shot up
police vehicles, incinerated buses, and a population in
panic. That was the situation in São Paulo on May 12, and
the days that followed. Between May 12th and 16th, the
Secretary of Public Security of the State of São Paulo
published alarming data: in the 251 attacks by the prison
gang First Command of the Capital (PCC), and its
confrontation with the police, there were 115 deaths,
including 32 police officers, 8 prison guards, and 75 people
who were shot by both sides.
The
transfer of eight prisoners, among them Marcola, a leader of
the PCC, to the Department for Investigations of Organized
Crime, provoked the first attacks. On the following day,
there were uprisings in prisons all over the state, with 132
hostages taken. Buses and bank branches were attacked on
Sunday, May 14th. In the state capital alone, the number of
deaths was 44; uprisings also occurred in the states of
Paraná and Mato Grosso do Sul, as well as in juvenile
detention centers run by FEBEM (Foundation for the
Well-being of Minors) in the state of São Paulo. The
violence continued in the early morning hours, totaling 66
incinerated city buses, a prison guard killed on the street,
and 4,000 buses not circulating throughout the city. Monday
was grim: businesses closed their doors early, schools and
universities suspended classes, and the city set a record
for traffic jams – 195 kilometers of gridlock. According
to the data from the Secretary of Prison Administration,
from May 12th to 15th, nine prisoners were killed in the
uprisings at 73 prisons in the state. Tuesday also had a
negative balance: an attack on a police barracks in Rio
Claro, in the interior of São Paulo state, shots fired and
a grenade thrown at a community center in Osasco.
On
September 15th, 2006, the newspaper Folha
de São Paulo reported that 493 people were killed
between May 12th and 20th, the period of the first PCC
attacks in São Paulo. The survey was done by the Regional
Council of Medicine in the 23 Medical Legal Institutes of
the state, and included all types of death by firearms,
including suicides and domestic violence.
On
September 21st, the newspaper Folha
de São Paulo reported that shortly before the first
attacks, Julinho Carambola, another PCC leader, had used
bribery to obtain pay stubs and employee addresses from the
Secretary of Public Administration, and that this data would
be used to kill prison guards outside of the prisons. The
report says that from May 12th until September 21st,
15 prison guards were killed, with at least eight of them
attacked near their homes.
According
to Antonio Funari Filho, the magistrate of the State Police
of São Paulo, of the 47 victims of the attack attributed to
the PCC, 24 were military police (including 2 firemen),
eight civilian police, eight prison guards, three municipal
guards, and four civilians.
Funari
states that there were 87 civilian deaths in which the
attackers were not identified. Of these 87 deaths, the
majority (18) was in the southern part of the capital, 16
were in Guarulhos and 12 were in the northern part of the
capital.
The
numbers, as we can see, are variable. The fact is that the
population of São Paulo witnessed, between May and August,
three crime waves. The motives may be varied: lack of
effective social policies, a failed prison system,
inadequate working conditions, police corruption, and low
salaries.
And the remainder of innocent deaths is frightening.
Twenty-eight
year-old Maurício Assis de Menezes is an example. He had
worked in a family bar in Capão Redondo, in the southern
zone of São Paulo, since he was 14 years old, and was known
by the neighbors as a very quiet youth. On May 16th,
he and seven friends went out on the street to unroll a
string of lights that illuminated the snack bar. Without
even having time to think about what was happening, the
police ordered them to put their hands on the head. Men in
baseball caps shot the boys in their backs. Of the seven,
five died, including Maurício.[3]