VZCZCXYZ1320
RR RUEHWEB

DE RUEHBR #1472/01 3501441
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 161440Z DEC 09
FM AMEMBASSY BRASILIA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 0148
INFO RUEHBR/AMEMBASSY BRASILIA
RUEHRG/AMCONSUL RECIFE
RUEHRI/AMCONSUL RIO DE JANEIRO
RUEHSO/AMCONSUL SAO PAULO

UNCLAS BRASILIA 001472 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PHUM PREL PGOV ELAB SNAR SOCI KCRM BR
SUBJECT: U.S.-Brazil Project on Racial Profiling by the Police -- 
Visit of U.S. Technical Experts 
 
REF: BRASILIA 1167; BRASILIA 1292 
 
¶1.  Summary:  In meetings in Brasilia December 2-4, three U.S. 
technical experts, together with representatives of the Brazilian 
Ministry of Justice, Ministry of External Relations, Special 
Secretariat for the Promotion of Racial Equality (SEPPIR) and 
Police Academy of the State of Santa Catarina, planned next steps 
in a pilot project to combat racial profiling by police in the 
states of Parana, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul.  Over the 
next two months, the U.S. experts will collect U.S. police training 
materials to be translated by the Embassy and provided to Brazilian 
counterparts.  The American experts will return to Brazil in late 
March 2010 to discuss and test the materials, both for content and 
methodology for use with students, in workshops with police academy 
instructors gathered in the city of Florianopolis.  The final 
product of the project is to be a "toolkit" of manuals, 
bibliographies, DVDs, PowerPoint presentations and laptops that can 
be used to train police recruits in Brazil's southern states. 
(Note:  The project currently is unfunded and can be completed only 
if funding is found - see paragraph 17.)  End summary. 
 
 
 
Police impunity 
 
 
 
¶2.  According to numerous studies of policing in Brazil, including 
a recent report of Human Rights Watch entitled "Lethal Force," a 
2008 Report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on 
Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions, and annual U.S. 
State Department Human Rights Reports, police throughout the 
country routinely commit unlawful executions that are almost never 
punished.  The racial element of such police behavior (while the 
police are both black and white, the victims are overwhelmingly 
black) is seldom discussed in part because of a paucity of data, 
the complexity of the subject, and widespread denial on the part of 
white Brazilians that racism exists. 
 
 
 
¶3.  However, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), in its 
Human Development Report on Racism, Poverty and Violence - Brazil 
2005, documents differential treatment of blacks and whites by the 
police.  According to the report, the proportion of blacks who are 
victims of police violence is three times that of whites in the 
State of Rio de Janeiro.  The report states:  "The probability of 
blacks dying in clashes with the police is much higher in the 
slums, where police killings are higher, but the difference between 
whites and blacks is also disproportional in other urban areas." 
Moreover, blacks are more likely to be stopped by the police, to be 
searched, to be arrested and to be forced to pay a bribe.  Unlike 
white Brazilians, blacks, according to various public opinion 
surveys carried out between 1995 and 1997, fear the police more 
than they fear common criminals. 
 
 
 
A need for training 
 
 
 
¶4.  Against this background, the Special Secretariat for the 
Promotion of Racial Equality (SEPPIR), an office of the Brazilian 
presidency, held its Second National Congress for the Promotion of 
Racial Equality (CONAPIR) in June 2009 with about 1,500 
participants.  Several of the resolutions to come out of that 
conference concerned security and justice, including the following: 
 
 
 
-- "Promote the inclusion of the ethnic-racial theme in 
professional training courses in the areas of health, security and 
justice." 
 
-- "Stimulate training of agents of Civil Defense, Military Police, 
Civil Police, Municipal Guards, Firefighting Corps, Ambulance 
Service and others to give effect to human rights and combat 
institutional racism." 
 
-- "Require training of Military and Civil Police, as well as 
Municipal Guards, for respectful treatment during police stops 
related to Afro-Brazilian religious groups." 
 
 
A proposal 
 
 
 
¶5.  During preparations for the Third Meeting of the Steering Group 
of the U.S.-Brazil Joint Action Plan to Eliminate Racial and Ethnic 
Discrimination and Promote Equality, SEPPIR, the Brazilian Ministry 
of External Relations (MRE) and Ministry of Justice proposed to the 
USG a joint project to combat racial stereotyping and profiling by 
the Brazilian police (ref A).  In ensuing discussions involving the 
Embassy's Resident Legal Adviser (RLA) (Note: The RLA program has 
since been shut due to a lack of USG funding. End note.) and 
poloff, the GOB and USG narrowed the focus to a pilot project in 
Brazil's three southernmost states - Parana, Santa Catarina and Rio 
Grande do Sul - chosen largely because of the presence in Santa 
Catarina of an enlightened and progressive chief of training civil 
police, Andre Luis Mendes da Silveira. 
 
 
 
¶6.  On the margins of the Third Meeting of the Joint Action Plan 
(ref B), the USG agreed to bring U.S. technical experts to Brazil 
to visit the police and civil society in all three states and to 
discuss in more detail with the GOB the formulation of a pilot 
training program. 
 
 
 
First steps 
 
 
 
¶7.  Accordingly, the following U.S. experts traveled separately to 
Brazil, using U.S. Speaker funding, between November 29 and 
December 8: 
 
 
 
-- Dr. Tracie L. Keesee, Division Chief of Research, Training and 
Technology, Denver Police Department. 
 
-- Dr. Philip Atiba Goff, Assistant Professor of Social Psychology 
at the University of California, Los Angeles, and expert on racial 
bias and discrimination in policing. 
 
-- Dr. Clarence Lusane, Associate Professor of Political Science 
and International Relations, American University, and expert in 
anti-discrimination and criminal justice policies. 
 
 
 
Keesee traveled to Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul November 
29-December 2 where she met with police and civil society groups; 
Goff did the same in Parana December 5-7.  Lusane spent December 1 
in Sao Paulo with a variety of NGOs focused on police violence. 
Keesee and Lusane also met with the Military Police of the Federal 
District on December 2. 
 
 
 
¶8.  From December 2-4, Keesee, Goff, Lusane and poloff met in 
Brasilia with the following persons to plan next steps in a pilot 
project of combat racial profiling in southern Brazil: 
 
 
 
-- Jorge Luiz de Quadros, Coordinator of Police Activities, 
National Program of Public Security and Citizenship (PRONASCI), 
Ministry of Justice. 
 
-- Diogo Machado, SEPPIR. 
 
-- Bruna Vieira de Paula, MRE. 
 
-- Jorge da Silva, commandant of the State of Rio de Janeiro 
Military Police (retired). 
 
-- Andre Luis Mendes da Silveira and three of his colleagues, State 
of Santa Catarina Civil Police. 
 
 
 
"Racial Democracy" 
 
 
¶9.  If half of Brazil's population has African blood, as many 
claim, Brazil has the second largest African-descendant population 
(after Nigeria) in the world.  Jorge da Silva presented a paper 
noting what he describes as Brazil's "national myth of racial 
democracy" according to which racism is impossible because of the 
thoroughness of racial admixture.  In light of a national identity 
that holds "We are all Brazilians of various shades," many white 
Brazilians are offended when their compatriots claim a black 
identity.  To acknowledge race, some whites believe, is to create 
divisions in society where none had existed before.  Da Silva, who 
is black, said white Brazilians "look surprised" when they hear 
that a black man or woman "has experienced racial discrimination 
and rejection all of his or her life." 
 
 
 
¶10.  The tendency of Brazilian society to avoid the race issue, da 
Silva said, is especially prevalent in the police.  Seldom is race 
recorded in police statistics or even in press reports about police 
operations.  If it appears that people of darker skin are targeted 
by police, it is denied; such apparent targeting might be explained 
as a focus on the slums, which are high-crime areas and happen to 
be predominantly black.  When Lusane raised this issue with a 
military police colonel in the Federal District, the colonel 
scoffed at the idea that the police discriminate on the basis of 
race, noting that he, like most of his colleagues, has black 
ancestry dating back a century or two. 
 
 
 
¶11.  Silveira confirmed that there is a deliberate avoidance of 
discussion of the influence of race in the behavior of police. 
Yet, he said, it is common for police to refer pejoratively to a 
black suspect as "negao" and treat him more roughly than they would 
a white suspect.  Thus, for Silveira whose job is training police, 
the first objective is to overcome denial that racism exists.  This 
cannot be done by accusing the police but by a calm exposition of 
facts.  Only then can the issue be confronted and solutions found. 
 
 
 
Outline of a project 
 
 
 
¶12.  Quadros stressed the importance of bringing U.S. best 
practices to Brazil, a bibliography on race and police, and modern 
teaching methods.  He said that any teaching materials brought from 
the United States and translated into Portuguese could be put onto 
the Ministry of Justice Web site and thus be available to every 
state in the country. 
 
 
 
¶13.  Keesee volunteered to compile relevant materials on cultural 
competency used in police academies in the United States and 
provide them for review by Brazilian police instructors.  Embassy 
will endeavor to translate some of the materials.  Keesee said the 
goal should be to create a "toolkit" specifically adapted to the 
conditions of southern Brazil and containing manuals, 
bibliographies, DVDs, PowerPoint presentations and laptops.  She 
stressed that the training, to have a significant impact, must 
reach the military police of all three states.  The job of the 
military police is prevention and first response; they therefore 
are much more likely to have clashes with the population than are 
the civil police, an investigative branch. 
 
 
 
¶14.  Goff noted the importance of conducting research in connection 
with the project and establishing baseline racial attitudes - of 
police recruits, existing police, and the community in which they 
work.  Without conducting measurements both before and after the 
training, it will be impossible to determine to what extent the 
training was successful.  Goff said it was also important to 
examine the police selection process as some racial attitudes 
cannot be corrected by training. 
 
 
 
¶15.  Lusane said that the project should involve the police and 
black civil society working together at the same table.  There must 
be involvement of and buy-in from the people affected by police 
racial stereotyping, profiling and abuse.  The training should 
include some historic grounding and a presentation of available 
 
 
data on racial violence.  Lusane said there should be an analysis 
of institutional as well as personal racism and discussion of the 
intersecting issues of race, sex, class, etc. 
 
 
 
Next steps 
 
 
 
¶16.  The Brazilian and U.S. sides discussed the following next 
steps to make the pilot project a reality: 
 
 
 
-- Provision of U.S. police training materials on racial profiling. 
 
-- Translation into Portuguese of the most important of these 
materials. 
 
-- U.S. bibliographical material on content of and methodology for 
police training programs on racial issues. 
 
-- Return to Brazil of Keesee, Goff and either Lusane or his fellow 
co-chair of U.S. civil society in the Joint Action Plan, Kimberle 
Crenshaw, to discuss, adapt and test training materials.  This will 
be done in workshops in Florianopolis in late March and will be 
organized by Andre Luis Mendes da Silveira, head of the civil 
police academy of Santa Catarina.  Silveira will convoke military 
and civil police instructors from all three southern states for 
this purpose. 
 
 
 
¶17.  Comment:  The U.S.-Brazil project on racial profiling will 
require additional funding in order to continue.  The expenses will 
be for travel and per diem of U.S. technical experts, mailing, 
translating and reproducing training materials, and other 
incidental costs.  Post believes this is a worthy project and 
should be supported with U.S. Speaker, International Narcotics and 
Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), International Criminal Investigative 
Training Assistance Program (ICITAP), or Overseas Prosecutorial 
Development Assistance and Training (OPDAT), Department of Justice, 
funds.  Implementing this project will improve the effectiveness of 
policing in Brazil, promote respect for human rights and 
non-discrimination, and create a model of cooperation under the 
U.S.-Brazil Joint Action Plan to Eliminate Racial and Ethnic 
Discrimination and Promote Equality. 
KUBISKE