Heard by Folha, public security experts pointed out “a series of errors” in the Federal Highway Police’s approach to motorcyclist Genivaldo de Jesus Santos. Stopped for driving without a helmet on a road in Sergipe, Genivaldo was closed in the car’s trunk with a tear gas canister. He died.
From the height of my lack of expertise, I can safely say that the experts are wrong.
Mistake is forgetting the pan on the fire and letting the beans burn.
Mistake is breaking spaghetti in half before throwing it in the water. Mistake is cooking the noodles until soft. A mistake is throwing grated cheese on pasta with seafood.
Mistake is removing the fat from the picanha to make barbecue. A mistake is when you order the meat rare and receive it roasted.
A mistake is eating sushi with a knife and fork. It’s harmonizing salmon temaki with Argentine malbec.
A mistake is going to the supermarket hungry and buying more food than you need with the money you don’t have.
Mistake is shopping absentmindedly and taking home caffeine-free coffee, lactose-free milk, alcohol-free beer and vegan tuna.
Mistake is calling the margarita drink a “margherita”. It’s heating up the margherita pizza in the microwave.
Mistake is ordering steak at the fish restaurant and lasagna at the steakhouse.
A mistake is to buy picanha burger thinking it has picanha. A mistake is to believe that any grub is good with truffle oil or cream cheese.
Mistake is putting salt in coffee and sweetener in fries.
What the PRF did to Edivaldo is qualified homicide. It is torture that resulted in death. It’s execution. It is deceit, not malpractice.
One of the experts says that “the approach was botched”. I even checked the meaning of the adjective: “clumsy” means rushed, confused, careless.
I don’t know if the specialist saw the same video that I saw. In the images I’ve seen, the police act unhurriedly, calmly and methodically, while Genivaldo’s legs struggle out of the car.
Police violence has a lot of method. The Nazi method of exterminating unwanted individuals in the gas chamber. The method taught in pre-college courses for PRF concurseiros –yesterday emerged the video of a teacher who, with laughter, teaches how to “calm down” people locked in the patrol car with pepper spray.
As shown by a BBC Brasil report, also published in Folha, the PRF eliminated a subject on human rights from the agents’ training curriculum. It’s all set up to be the same.
Genivaldo’s death is the result of a series of mistakes – our mistakes, not those of the road executioners.
It was a huge mistake to have allowed the power of the guard on the corner, the inspector of other people’s wire and the widow of the dictatorship.
It was a gigantic mistake to go about life normally while the armed militias, in uniform or not, only grew.
It was an unacceptable mistake to hand over the country to a bunch of disqualified people who celebrate death.
We can’t afford to keep making mistakes like this.
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