Brazilian Police Kill Mentally Ill Black Man in Squad Car Used as a Gas Chamber
Outrage is building across Brazil as a result of the latest bout of apparent police brutality after a mentally ill Black man died inside the trunk of a police car. Protests have grown violent after people blocked roads and started fires.
Video of the incident shows Genivaldo de Jesus Santos pushed to the ground and handcuffed and then lifted and stuffed inside the hatchback of a clearly marked Brazil Federal Highway Police car where he died after a tear gas canister was thrown inside. “The images are just shocking,” Samira Bueno, executive director of the nongovernmental Brazilian Forum on Public Safety told the Washington Post. “He’s a mentally disturbed person, and it’s the story of you using the vehicle as a gas chamber to immobilize a person.”
The man, 38, can be seen struggling with his legs kicking and then growing limp as thick white clouds pour out of the car. The man’s wife, Maria Fabiana dos Santos told local media that her husband was murdered. “I don’t even call it fatality,” she said. “That was really a crime. They acted with cruelty to kill him.”
Santos’ wife said her husband suffered from diagnosed schizophrenia and became agitated after he was stopped by police. When they found medicine in his pocket—presumably for his mental illness—they tried to arrest him.
“We told the police all the time that he had a heart problem, he had mental problems,” Wallison de Jesus, his nephew, told the Washington Post. “And they continued the torture, telling everyone to stay away.”
A statement from both the Federal Police and the Highway Police said the matter was under investigation and that the officers involved had been suspended, adding that he had been aggressive with police who then used “immobilisation techniques and instruments of less offensive potential.”
Police brutality under far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has spiked in recent years, with 21 people killed during a police operation on Tuesday after officers opened fire on civilians as part of a targeted drug raid.
Activists say that most of those targeted by police are Black. “There is no way out for Brazil that is not built on guaranteeing the life of the Black population,” Douglas Belchior of the Brazilian Black Movement Delegation said, according to the Post.
Brazil’s Forum of Public Security says that 80 percent of the 6,416 people killed by police in 2020 were Black. “These two pieces of vermin know they are being filmed and yet they still applied a death sentence,” Douglas Belchior of the Coalition for Black Rights tweeted. “There is no more decency or embarrassment. They tortured and executed the guy.”
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