"The offender with a rifle must be killed"

This judge – according to a newspaper article El País – virtually unknown until the candidate for governorship of Rio de Janeiro, repeat these words during the ten weeks of the campaign.

Last Sunday, the same day that the friend of the violence, Jair Bolsonaro, was also elected President of the Republic, Witzel was declared the winner with 60% of the votes. The two victories are linked: he has received the support of one of Bolsonaro's sons, Senator Flavio.

And now, who inherits a bankrupt state, gnawed by corruption and violence, must demonstrate how far he is willing to apply the promised hard hand

Rio, one of the Brazil's most violent states, a microcosm in which, according to the Forum of Public Security, 6,749 people died in 2017, thus becomes a sort of laboratory of Bolsonaro's most authoritarian ideas. Witzel and the wars between mafia groups in the favelas and the forces of the order, which try to put an end to the bleeding with balls, constitute the ideal pretext to test the philosophy of the new president: "The policeman who does not kill n & rsquo; Is not a policeman ". The army also received state security control in mid-February: exactly what Bolsonaro suggested for the whole country.

Thus, Judge Witzel baderts that the only possible solution to such violence is more violence "A criminal with a rifle is stopped by another rifle.It is useless to ask him to leave it on the ground because he The policeman who was questioned will defend the accusation, "he said last week at a meeting with the security forces. On Thursday, as governor-elect, he insisted to the Estadão newspaper: "The good thing to do is to kill the criminal, and the police will make the right choice, aim the head and the fire!"

reactions. Several groups highlighted the problems generated by this proposal, ranging from ethical or social to the violation of human rights. But nobody has been as insightful as the lawyers: what the governor proposes is not legal. An armed offender does not justify, in Brazilian law, self-defense. "In principle, the police do not kill, they only defend themselves," said Colonel Robson Silva, police chief of Rio de Janeiro.