The Aquino Case | Fallout Hits the PM

The maximUM overkill of one of our neighbors by the friendly neighborhood military police so far seems to be generating the public pressure the case deserves.

• Jornal do Brasil | MPF quer acabar com comando da Polícia Militar em São Paulo 

At a public hearing at the federal public prosecutor’s office on Thursday concerning the elevated number of homicides by São Paulo state police agents, Federal Attorney Matheus Baraldi Magnani said that his office would file a civil suit. “It is urgent that we request the immediate dismissal of the military police leadership in S. Paulo.»

And why should civilian leaders not also be asked to step down?

Cleaning up two corrupt and ultraviolent state police forces is, on the other hand, not a job for the faint of heart.

Even so, the SSP secretary — public safety — in Rio, the former federal police agent Beltrame, has begun to have some good success.

Lawyers for the three troopers who fired 7, or 8 — we counted eight, the shooting took place maybe 30 yards from out front gate — bullets into the car of a neighbor have not helped matters much in the public relations department.

«He (Aquino) was behaving just like a miscreant. He tried to flee and the police fired at him to prevent him fleeing. There was no error. Had he stopped when ordered, none of this would have happened», the attorney said.

Preventing flight is not a sensible justification for an overkill shooting like this, and in fact seems to imply that no self-defense justification is possible.

CartaCapital | «Scheme Paid Off Supreme»

Above: «Mendes appears on a list of slush fund recipients en 1998. The list includes Jorge Bornhausen, Agripino Maia, Walfrido de Mares Guia, the Cardoso reelection campaign, and many others.»

• O valerioduto abasteceu Gilmar Mendes | Carta Capital

Brazil’s little newsweekly that could brings to light what it characterizes as, roughly translated, «slush fund» accounting documents reflecting payouts to current Supreme Court justice Gilmar Mendes by a Minas Gerais political machine, the same scheme that would later surface in a subsequent election finance scandal involving the PT political party and its allies.

The trial of defendants in the latter case is to commence next week.

CartaCapital is calling for Mendes to recuse himself.

The magazine has, it should be said, been a consistent thorn in the side of the justice, questioning, for example, his relationship with the disgraced senator Demóstenes Torres in another current scandal, the Charlie Waterfall numbers racketeering case.

Medical Detectives Comb Avenue of the Owls

The latest in the police shooting of a neighbor of ours, via G1, and I translate …

The state high court of São Paulo ordered the release of three military police suspected of homicide in the death last  week of business owner Ricardo Prudente de Aquino, 39.

The men participated in the reconstruction of the crime scene on Thursday, in the Alto de Pinheiros neighborhood, Western District.

This is actually Sumarezinho. The incident took place maybe 30m from our front gate.