2023-07-20 08:44:25
According to the study, intrusive or violent contacts with the police are marked by a specific race and gender bias.
PAOLA FERREIRA ROSA
SÃO PAULO, SP (FOLHAPRESS)
Black children and adolescents aged 11 to 14 are twice as likely to be stopped and searched by police in São Paulo than whites of the same age, according to a survey by the Center for the Study of Violence at USP (University of São Paulo).
According to the study, intrusive or violent contacts with the police are marked by a specific bias of race and gender, with blacks and boys being more likely to go through these experiences.
“We understand that this is not something random, but a racialized experience. What the police claim is that the approaches do not have this racial bias, that they will not stop someone simply because of their skin color”, says Aline Mizutani Gomes, Master in School Psychology from USP and one of the authors of the research.
“But our data precisely show that being black doubles the chances of being stopped, compared to a white person”, he adds. Sought after, the Secretariat of Public Security in São Paulo says that the approach complies with technical and legal standards and that it invests in anti-racist training for police officers.
In all, about 800 students from 120 schools were interviewed, distributed in the five macro-regions of São Paulo (north, south, east, west and center), with 41.25% coming from private schools, 51.25% from state schools and 7.5% from municipal schools. The sample consisted of 50% girls and 50% boys, and the questions were asked for the same group from 2016 to 2019.
In 3 of the 4 years of the survey, being stopped by the police or being approached by someone was associated with self-declared black students. In 2016, they represented 11.50% of the sample, but they were 18.24% of those who had this type of contact.
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In 2017, while 12-year-old blacks made up 10.78% of the sample, there were 22.58% of those who claimed to have been stopped by the police. In the same year, of the total number of black adolescents, 17.50% were stopped by the police, while whites were 9.11%, and browns, 4.4%.
In 2019, 14-year-old black teenagers made up 11.25% of the sample, but 20% of those stopped by the police.
Another contact measured by the questionnaire was the body search. Rarer (79.47% of those who participated in the four years of research were not searched by the police), the experience is still influenced by racial filtering. While the distribution of whites and browns searched remained close to their sample distributions, for black adolescents it was discrepant.
In 2016, 11-year-old blacks made up 11.37% of the sample and 24.35% of those who had this contact. In the same year, among black adolescents in the sample, 20.87% were searched, compared to 9% of whites and 6.8% of mixed races.
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In 2017, at the age of 12, blacks made up 10.78% of the sample, but 23.33% of those searched. In 2019, when participants were 14 years old and self-declared blacks accounted for 11.25% of the sample, they were 22.97% of those searched by the police.
“When you think that 11-year-old children are already having this contact with the police, they are already seeing the police arrest and handcuff someone, and some are even being approached, it is a bit shocking, right? This demonstrates that there is something there to be thought about”, says the researcher.
This is also an experience that affects more boys than girls. In 2017, for example, 50.13% of the sample consisted of male children and adolescents. They were 83.33% of those searched. In 2018 and 2019, the participation of boys in the sample remained close to 50%, but they were 78% and 82.43% of those searched, respectively.
As for aggression, 98.57% of adolescents stated that they had never been attacked by a police officer. However, of the 8 who responded that they had been beaten by the police in 2019, 4 were brown and 3 were black.
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Another contact raised by the study is being taken to the police station. In 2016, 4.37% of the participants went through this situation. In that year, an association was noted between the type of contact with the police and racial markers: black adolescents were 25.71% of those who claimed to have been taken to the police station, compared to 11.37% of participation in the sample.
According to the researcher, the observation of the data from the control variables, such as race and gender, allowed the researchers to identify differences in treatment between the groups.
In this sense, the report points out that self-declared mixed-race adolescents had experiences with the police that were more similar to whites than blacks. For this reason, the research avoided using the term pretos as a category formed by the sum of pretos and pardos, as occurs in some studies.
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SP POLICE SAY THEY INVEST IN ANTI-RACIST TRAINING
The study maintained the term “police” as a reference, without distinguishing between the Civil and Military Police. However, the contacts mainly refer to ostensible policing activities, which are the responsibility of the PM.
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Contacted by the report, the SSP (Secretary of Public Security of São Paulo) did not answer the specific questions related to the research and stated that the police approach obeys the technical parameters disciplined by law and standardized through the “Standard Operating Procedures”. The text says that “the Military Police has sought to continuously evolve and improve its performance”, having created the Citizenship and Human Dignity Division and revised approach protocols.
Also according to the note, all agents study anti-racist actions in the subjects Africanities and Human Rights – Affirmative Actions and actions were implemented to promote the safety and integrity of the population and police officers, such as the use of equipment with less offensive potential and body cameras that record the action.
Finally, the institution said it seeks to establish objective, rational and legal guidelines and parameters, “without any type of discrimination or prejudice based on race, color, ethnicity, origin, where the civil police officer, in the performance of his activity, can act in accordance with and respect for the basic principles of the Democratic State of Law, especially that of the dignity of the human person”.
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