Straight Talk

The school uniforms are all scribbled up with markers on the last day of classes. It is early December, the school year is almost over and holidays are around the corner. Amid the festive spirit, two uniformed police officers, armed with guns, are in the patio of Niteroy´s Centro Moderno de Ensino School. The kids react immediately: “Are you a police officer, man? Wow. Look at that gun!”

Along with officers Claudia Otilia and Marco Pedra, there was another adult stranger in that school patio. It was Chinaider Pinheiro, a former drug trafficker and current member of the NGO Afroraggae. The trio belong to the Papo de Responsa project, a partnership between the Rio de Janeiro State Civil Police force, and the Afroraggae cultural group, that has been visiting schools and universities – public and private, as well as churches, shelters and businesses in Rio. 

Photo: (from left, Lucia Fortes, Claudia Otilia, Marco Pedra and Chinaider Pinheiro)

The point of the visits is to start conversation – this time it was with kids age 12 to 15. There is no prepared script or model for the talk. Topics and questions pop up prompted by the flow of conversation. “We don’t bring any specific material, all we do is show a video about prejudice, that has strong images. But the school will guide the dynamics of the conversation, or the give us the general direction. In the end it’s the conversation itself that takes off,” said Claudia.

The meetings are almost always about public security and citizenship. It includes bullying, lack of respect in school and at home, internet use (and abuse) by young people, and it will even touch on police corruption, problems in the corrections system, and drug use and descriminalization. Since the topics are complex and controversial, that would demand much longer conversation, not all questions are answered. But Papo de Responsa hopes that once young people are interested it will mean a lasting connection to the institutions they visit.
“We want to create connections to youths, to stay in touch with them, to foster more debates and meetings in the same schools, to go back, to talk, to raise awarenesses,” said Civil Police Force Inspector Marco Pedra. Next month the project takes another step forward. Claudia announced that the program is staring a partnership with the State Education Office to take the program to a number of public schools.

The conversations inevitably go round to criticising police actions. “We are prepared for criticism. If I ask you what you think of the police, I am sure I am not going to hear nice things. Police officers are part of society, if an officer is corrupt, it is because society is also corrupt. It is what I call active and passive corruption. We have double the responsibility with police officers and citizens. The police is no less corrupt simply because we are here today.” In response to a student's question of how to defend onesself from corrupt police officers, Pedra was straight to the point: “If you are up to date with your papers then there is no way that corrupt police officers can threaten you and you are free from extortion.”

Papo members Chinaider and the police officers have other jobs too.  Afroreggae program director is also head of the Empregabilidade program. He tries to help people from low income communities, former convicts, and even criminals who decide to leave crime and go straight.
The police officers from the Papo program also continue to carry out their activities in the police force. Other people responsible for the program include  Beto Chaves from the Civil Police Force, and Norton Guimarães from Afroreggae.

Dialogue and choice

The main goal of the project is to integrate police and communities. The Lemma says it all: “Papo (conversation) is the way out of war, it brings down walls, opens paths and ends prejudices”. The conversations center on human values, that, according to Luca Fortes, school coordinator, are not subject to fads. She also thought it was good timing to bring the Papo to the schools, since children will soon be on vacations with a lot of time on their hands.

“Often the problem in our society is not crime, but lack of converstaion. How many times this year have you hugged your parents and told them you love them? Our day-to-day lives are very busy, there is no time for conversation. We are always in a habit of thinking its other people's responsibility, not ours,” said police officer Marco Pedra.

Photo: Civil Police Officer Marco Pedra during his talk at a school in Niteroi.

“We are not here to repeat the same messages, like “don't do drugs”. We are here to wake people up. To have people ask themselves: what do I want of life? Our life choices are very important. We have each one of us to decide for ourselves. Are we going to do ectasy or have marijuana in a party? If in the future, you decide to enter public service, for example, something like that can be an end to your dreams.

An ex-convict's story

Chinaider's story however, called more attention than the police officers's talks. He is an ex-convict, who left prison in the begining of 2009 and joined Afroreggae almost directly. It was Afroreggae cooridinator José Junior who offered him the opportunity to join the program. A former drug trafficker, Chinaider was in prison for a total of 10 years and four months, that included a number of escapes and re-arrests, for heading the drug trade in six large shanty towns in Rio, Vigário Geral among them.

Chinaider agrees about the importance of one's the choices one makes in life. All his past in the world of crime, he admits, was a result of his decision. He described the difficulties his wife and children face in visiting him in prison, his daughter's letters he read in prison, his brother's murder in a confrontation with the police, and down to the food he was forced to eat, that he described as “stinky and rotten”. His conclusion was that “life of crime is an illusion, it attracts many girls who are drawn to traffickers because they think it is glamorous, but that it is a big mistake, since they will never have a stable relationship,” he said.

“I earned almost 10 thousand reals a week, but my family was not proud of me. On the contrary, they were ashamed of me,” he said. Today, at age 35 and after completing his secondary education, earning a salary, like he said himself “with the sweat of my brow and doing decent work,” Chinaider is proud of himself.

One youth asked Chinaider how many people he had killed in his past. But Chinaider, said instead that he is “passionate about his current work” and that he has lost count of the number of times he has taken someone out of the world of crime since he joined the Empregabilidade program. He says he often gets calls from fellow ex-cons, and that the first thing he asks them is “do you want to  change your life?”

Chinaider's work in ressocializing ex-cons goes beyond finding them jobs. He also supervises their work. He will be called up by employers who want to make  compliments or complaints. Chinaider describes his own work as very gratifying, only three cases, in his account, did not work out successfully.

Police officers and criminals - on the same side?

Ten members from each side – the Civil Police and Afroreggae – make the Papo de Responsa happen. This union would have been unthinkable previously. “A few years ago I would say it is impossible to be here, next to Chinaider. Today I see things a little differently,” said Claudia.
“For us from the Civil Police, creating the Papo program was quite a challenge. We had to let go of a lot of prejudices, we had to let go of many so called absolute truths that people try to impose on us, to try and build a different type of reality. We police officers, the ex-criminals, and youths, our worlds are completely averse to each other. But it is amazing how we can learn through differences. That is why we are here, to open up channels for comunication, dialogue,” aid the police officer.

Photo: Papo de Responsa members talk to teenagers about drugs, violence, prejudice and citizenship

Papo is still a work in progress. The meetings are still being set. The police officers would like to include the Papo de Responsa definitively into their corporation. But they know it also means an uphill battle against a number of prejudices, as noted by Claudia herself. But she believes in the youths' power of social transformation, and she wants to fulfill her personal goal. She decided, when she joined the corporation to make it a better corporation as her legacy to society.

Translated by Lis Horta Moriconi