Rio de Janeiro state governor, Cláudio Castro (PL), will recreate the state’s Public Security Secretariat. He will appoint federal police officer Victor dos Santos to the position. The new structure of the Security Secretariat will be leaner than previously and should have three sub-secretariats: management, operational and intelligence.
Separation
Former governor Wilson Witzel abolished the secretariat in 2019. After that, the division between the Civil Police Secretariat and the Military Police Secretariat was made and each corporation head gained the status of secretary.
Crisis
Rio de Janeiro is experiencing a public security crisis. Since 6 November, the Guarantee of Law and Order (GLO) decree has come into force at ports and airports in the state. The operation should last until 3 May 2024, and was authorized by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT).
New Secretary
Announced by Governor Cláudio Castro as Rio’s new Secretary of Security, Victor Cesar Carvalho dos Santos, has more than 30 years of experience in the Federal Police and actions against some of the best-known names in Rio’s organized crime.
In 1999, Santos joined the team at the Narcotics Repression Police Station (DRE), when the superintendence dismantled drug gangs and arrested criminals such as Marco Antônio da Silva Tavares, “Marquinho Niterói”, Sandro Mendonça do Nascimento, “Sandrinho Beira-Mar” (general cocaine manager of Luiz Fernando da Costa, known as Fernandinho Beira-Mar) and Júlio Cesar Cordeiro Gomes, responsible for, according to the PF, almost 60% of the drugs and weapons distributed to the favelas and hills of Rio de Janeiro at that time. He stayed until 2001, where he left for the corporation’s Internal Affairs Department before returning to the DRE in 2005.
Conflict with the Federal Government
Sources from the Lula government see the name indicated by the governor of Rio de Janeiro, Claudio Castro (PL), to take over the recreated Secretariat of Public Security in the State as an option to clash with the Ministry of Justice and an operation tied to a future candidacy for Alexandre Ramagem, now federal deputy, to Rio’s city hall.
The new security secretary is close to the former director general of the PF during the Bolsonaro government, Paulo Maiurino, and the former Justice Minister Anderson Torres and also to Ramagem, who was director of Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin) under Bolsonaro.
A senior government source sees the choice of name directly connected with the 2024 electoral race and the intention of Jair Bolsonaro’s party, the PL, to make Ramagem a candidate for mayor.
Contrary Statements
The recreation of Rio’s Public Security Secretariat, announced on Monday (27/11) by Cláudio Castro, goes against a statement made less than two months ago by the governor himself.
On 3 October, during a wave of violence in the Metropolitan Region, Castro said in an interview with GloboNews that the secretariat “does not need the slightest”. Before, according to the governor, the institution was an “imminently political body” from which “several people left to become federal deputies and state deputies.”
Folder Extinct in 2019
With the decision, the Civil and Military police cease to be independent secretariats and are once again subordinate to the Security Secretariat, which had been abolished by former governor Wilson Witzel, in 2019. After that, the division between the Civil Police Secretariat was made and the Military Police Secretariat and each corporation head gained secretary status.
Analysis:
Rio de Janeiro no longer had a Public Security secretariat on the day of the inauguration of then State Governor Wilson Witzel. As a result, there was no longer a body that integrated the public policies of the Military Police (PM) and the Civil Police. Over time, this left the area more exposed to political pressures that would have contributed to worsening Rio’s Security crisis, according to experts. Since the end of the Security Secretariat, the division of responsibilities between the Civil Police secretariats and the PM Secretariat has been marked by the instability of the occupants. Since 2019, the Civil Police, for example, has had six directors. The new secretariat will have the task of creating a Security Plan focused on combating organized crime. It has not yet been decided whether, following the example of the old structure, the Undersecretariat of Intelligence of the Secretariat of Security, and the Office for the Repression of the Actions of Organized Criminal Organizations (Draco) will be recreated. The latter functioned as a police station to carry out investigations into secret operations against criminal groups. The attack on PM Vaneza Lobão, on Friday (24/11), murdered on her doorstep by hooded men armed with rifles, weighed on Castro’s decision. The police officer worked in the PM’s Internal Affairs Department and investigated colleagues who were involved with the militias.
