Interior designer shot dead in Civil Police operation in Sergipe

Interior designer shot dead in Civil Police operation in Sergipe

Note from BW of Brazil: Black Brazil has been in a state of emergency for quite some time. Black bodies haven’t stop falling to the due to overwork, starvation, poor salaries, poor health care and murder since the arrival of the first Africans in the first half of the 16th century. And the genocide continues to this day. In the last few months, a few of the shocking murders of black Brazilians have made headlines and provoked street protests and expressions of rage in social networks.

A few months back, Pedro Henrique Gonzaga was strangled to death in a supercenter in São Paulo. Then, a little over a week ago, 51-year old musician Evaldo Rosa dos Santos was killed in a car that was shot at 80 times by the Brazilian Army. He was taking his family to a baby shower. Now we get news that a man was shot and killed by police forces in the northeastern state of Sergipe. Of course, the average Brazilian will tell us that race played no role in these murders, but then how do we explain that 74.5% of 61,283 murders in the country in 2016 were of non-whites? Of course, Brazil’s new president would probably say that the police “didn’t kill anyone”, but why would we even consider such as absurd statement? The fact is, black lives continue to be extinguished in very violent manner, and no one seems to care. Below is just another example of this genocide in progress. 

Interior designer shot dead in Civil Police operation

by Cassia Santana

Interior designer Clautênis José dos Santos, 37, was killed on Monday night, 8, the victim of shots fired by civilian police in an operation coordinated by the Secretariat of State for Public Security (SSP). Relatives that complained about the police’s actions, say that Clautênis was not involved in crimes and that the victim had left the Casa Paroquial in the Bugio neighborhood of Aracaju headed to Barra dos Coqueiros, where he lived. Aracaju is the capital city of the northeastern state of Sergipe.

Clautênis was with another man, his neighbor in Barra dos Coqueiros, who is an employee of the Casa Paroquial do Bugio (Bugio Parish House). As the family of both resided in Barra, the two men returned in the same vehicle, with the driver called, by the employee of the Casa Paroquial, through a phone app.

The nursing technician Maria Ieda Santos, Clautêni’s aunt, received the first information that her nephew was hospitalized in the red area of Hospital de Urgência de Sergipe (Huse) as a victim of a traffic accident. Subsequently, a niece of her called again informing that Clautêni was dead and that it had not been a traffic accident. “We want justice,” says the aunt. “The police should not have come this way, firing. If it was to stop the car, why did not shoot the tires?” she asks. “But the information we have is that the driver stopped the car,” she adds.

Clautênis’s neighbor, who was in the backseat of the vehicle, didn’t suffer any injury. “Because he got down the moment the shots were fired,” Ieda says. The victim’s brother, Cleverton dos Santos, reported that Clautênis left his home in Barra dos Coqueiros in the morning, spent the day in Pirambu and, in the afternoon, went to Bugio, where he dined in the Casa Paroquial with the priest and an employee of the parish, who is his neighbor in Barra dos Coqueiros. “As the two were going in the same destination, they took the same taxi and the man, who is a parish employee, called by application,” he said.

Clautênis’s friendship with the priest of the parish of Santos Dumont is old, according to the brother. According to Cléverton, the priest who works in that district in Aracaju is the same one who worked for a long time in Barra dos Coqueiros, where the Clautênis’s family resides. The change in the parish did not alienate the friendship between the priest, Clautênis and his relatives.

On Facebook, Clautênis’s friends posted several messages, conveying solidarity with the family, mourning the death of the interior designer and criticizing the police action. “Waking up with such news is devastating. Without believing this, once again history repeats itself, policemen who should watch over people’s well-being take their lives in irresponsible ways. My friend Clautênis José, a good-hearted person, I spoke to you one of these days and now this sad news,” said Jheniffer Kelly in one of the messages posted on Facebook.

Operation

According to information from the press office of the Secretariat of State for Public Security, the police operation was articulated as a consequence of an investigation involving the theft of vehicles. The advisory said that the case will be investigated by the Department of Homicide and Protection of the Person (DHPP) and that the chief Teresa Simony is already hearing the testimony of the civil police who participated in this operation to then know what actually happened at the site.

Source: Infonet