At close range

An exclusive article for the montlhy newsletter “En la mira – The Latin American Small Arms Watch.” Click here for subscriptions and for previous issues.

Interview with Rio de Janeiro State’s Public Security Secretary on the purchase of new armament for Rio de Janeiro’s State Police force

The State of Law’s garantee is in large part related to the proportionality and legality use of lethal force by the police. An essential condition to garantee the moderate and proportional use of lethal force is the police force being duly equipped and trained for its specific missions. Unfortunaltely, for a long time this has not been the case in the State of Rio de Janeiro, where due to the rise of violence among criminal facctions the police uses, since the late nineties, FAL and M-16 rifles as long barrel weapons of dotation for special operations as well as for urbn patrolling. In order to revert this situation, in May 2008, Rio de Janeiro State’s Public Security Secretary anounced the purchase of one thousand and five hundred Taurus .30 M1 caliber CT-30 carbines, of which one thousand will be distributed to the Military Police for urban patrolling duties and five hundred will be used by the Civil Police as the long barrel weapons to be carried in police patroll cars.

In this interview, José Mariano Beltrame, Rio de Janeiro State’s Public Security Secretary explains the advantages of and reasons for buying this new armamaent, and describes the political and doctrinal orientations that guided the purchase.

What was the reason for the purchase of the CT-30 carbines by Rio de Janeiro’s Public Security Secretary?

The reason for the purchase of the carbines was, firstly, the fact that we thought that we have in our patrimony weapons of a very high lethality potential. This doesn’t mean the police doesn’t have to use them. I think that there are situations and occasions in which we can use the rifle, we can use the carbines and eventually we can also use the non-lethal equipment also recently incorporated. In this sense, we want to give the police officers options in order to, whithin the possibilities, adequate the weapon to the activity he will develop and confront.

From this decision, a number of others things derive. For exemple, about the lost bullet issue. The new armament, for exemple, will allow a better identification of the weapon even due to the type of injury, which isn’t the same as of the one caused by a rifle. A rifle bullet has a range of two kilometers, it can hit two, three people when it shatters. We have many records of people wounded by firearms who were in fact injured by the shattering of lost bullets. The State is the one who is obligated to adequate its service to the community. This purchase is a State’s indication attempt in that direction. The criminal doesn’t have that concern in mind. He doesn’t worry about the type of weapon he uses.

He doesn’t want to know wether he uses a rifle anywhere in Rio de Janeiro. The police, as the State, has to act each time with more rationality and adequacy.

So it’s about adequating the type of arm to the type of mission?

Exactly

In which situations and by which units will the carbines be used?

Specially in the areas where we have patrolls and that are not areas conflagrated. Fatally, in conflagrated areas the incidence of the use of rifle is very high.

The carbine would be the long barrel weapon to be carried in police patroll cars?

When patrolling, yes. The carbine is a weapon that has a smaller agression visibility. And we are investing a lot in motorcycle patrolling. Four motorcycles with ride. We can’t put a rifle on the ... We are studying the possibility of arming the back seat officer with a carabine. Because, theorically, the motorcycle patrolling won’t be in conflagrated areas.

Daydreaming, do you even imagine the moment when these communities, where today there are strongly armed criminal groups, will have the permanent presence of the State to garantee their safety and rights?

We have the obligation to think like that and this is a situation very complex, because it has been like this for decades. We have to act on the opposite direction with the same strength as of the implantation of this process, and when I talk about strength, I’m referring to policies. We need policies. I have the convicction that I won’t end violence simply by changing the police’s armament, but it’s a necessary step. There’s an urgent need for policies to come and save these people’s lives. They only know the violent face of the State. Among other things, they need schooling for their children from nine in the morning to five in the afternoon. In order to reduce the violence, it’s also necessary to improve the life quality. The way is work, such as the PAC and the Pronasci, that should be the north.

* Pablo Dreyfus, Chief-editor of En La Mira and Coordinator of Viva Rio’s Arms Control Research Project