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These citizen journalists in Rio’s poorest areas are fighting police brutality with smartphones

Papo Reto, Portuguese for “Straight Talk”, formed as a citizens’ journalist collective in 2010 in response to government efforts to rid Complexo do Alemão – one of Rio de Janeiro’s largest favelas –of the drug-trafficking gang Comando Vermelho. We met the group in April as it celebrated a bittersweet victory. Thanks to Papo Reto’s reporting on the killing of 10 year-old Eduardo de Jesus, allegedly at the hands of police, the government opened a formal investigation into what happened. For the young members of Papo Reto, this is the first time they’ve seen such a display of accountability.

What do you think?

Written by daily reporters

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17 Comments

  1. Dont listen to those communists, those idiots want the Drug Dealers to return soo they can buy crack. Plus, the police here is soo poor that they probably live on the same Shanty Town

    • +Francis Dennis When I wrote about where the police live was in response to the commentary of the other guy.
      In Brazil the military police(PM) is the more common police force you can find, it not mean much that they are doing the occupation. Except when you look more close, and in our history, the PM was created to oppress any kind of deviant behavior that the local politicians dont like.
      There are some social movements that ask for extinction of PM because, in a lot of cases, they do the opposite of what they should. It is common that they are the ones that goes against civil rights. And we have a civil police, they could replace PM pretty well.
      About the video not abandoning the PM. They tried in the beginning of the video to show how the community are treated. And don’t tried more because it’s not the subject of the video. If I could bet the best they could get from the PM is a cop saying what they are trained to say, nothing new and nothing that explains something.

    • +Francis Dennis It’s something like that. Things were always a lot violent in those areas, and the fact that it didn’t got better after the military police occupation says a lot about the quality of our police. Here in Brazil, the militaries have a saying that Human Rights are for right humans (I don’t know if this make sense in english). They basically deny Human Rights for anyone that they think it might be a criminal, and this, obviously, results in a lot of police mistakes, like the killing of a 10 years old. That’s what this protests are about, it has nothing to do with communism or buying crack.

  2. I`m from Rio, the level of criminal violence is beyond war zones, criminal organizations have ten of thousands of men with war grade weapons. Policemen are ill prepared under equipped and under paid, it is not like police brutality in the US. Those “reporters” work for far leftists parties who are funded by big drug cartels and want crime to go rampant.

    • +RandomRoberto Pq eles estao eleitos e com campanhas milionarias, receberam ate dinheiro da Oderbrech, de onde veio esse poder? Pq o PCO que é mais antigo nao cresceu assim tb? Falam o mesmo bla bla bla… claro que é o envolvimento em favelas e sindicatos.

    • +Krycek Desculpa, mas você está enganado sobre o PSOL. Não só a postura do partido é publicamente contra financiamento privado de campanha,como, em sua grande maioria, os candidatos não usam dinheiro de empresas. Tanto que nenhum político do partido foi citado em nenhuma delação nem em nenhuma investigação da Lava Jato (pouquíssimos partidos podem falar isso). Falar que o PSOL faz campanhas milionárias é simplesmente mentira. Isso, obviamente, não significa que as ideologias do partido são as melhores para o Brasil. Mas querer botar o problema de segurança pública do Rio nas costas deles e acusar de envolvimento com o tráfico já é demais Quem é amigo íntimo do Zezé Perella é de outro partido.

  3. I used to live by alemão and I had friends down there too and it is full of crime and poverty but the police just make it worse looking at this. I haven’t been there for 2 years and I just want dilma and Lula and the police out.

  4. Honestly don’t know how you guys didn’t lose the gears lol. Stay away, they are treated with violence, but the people from favela treats outsiders the same way or worse. Is it bad for police to act that way? Yes, but they make the police act that way. Drug and weapon dealers live and run the favelas. How are we suppose to treat those people? Either you shoot or be shot. These people make the Government worst, putting corrupts on power. Brazil is dying because of them. Not to that specific favela but to all others. Like who the **** votes to an impeached President Collor to be the senator of the state like LOL.

  5. When you realize Carlos was in a police area with probability of conflict filming policemen doing something wrong just so he could gain money from selling the recordings. And he got a lie much better than that.

#AMHvoices Citizen Journalist

Dell’s Stephen Jio talks citizen journalism @City University