“Deconstructing Alckmin”: Books Cooked on São Paulo Bank Robberies

Terra Magazine interviews its own columnist, former São Paulo interim governor Claudio Lembo, about the latest flap over public safety in Brazil’s most populous and economically significant state.

The Brazilian press is giving a lot of play to the story that twice as many bank robberies occurred in São Paulo than officially reported during the administration of Geraldo Alckmin and his vice-governor, Lembo.

Current governor José Serra has reportedly ordered an audit of all crime statistics going back to 2004.

Alckmin and Lembo also come in for a good deal of bad press over an Amnesty International report published this week, titled ‘From burning buses to caveirões’: the search for human security:

The May [2006] violence exposed the deep flaws in the state’s approach to public security, which has long been characterised by reactive, ad hoc measures. Under Governor Geraldo Alckmin (2001-2006) and his state secretary of public security, there appeared to be a clear decision to adopt a highly repressive approach to law and order. As a result, killings by police officers, registered as “resistance followed by death”, peaked, reaching over 900 in one year, before dropping off in subsequent years. Police violence was accompanied by reports of active “death-squads” in the towns of Guarulhos and Ribeirão Preto. Incarceration rates climbed at an unsustainable rate — in 2003 increases were running at over 1,000 prisoners per month; between 2003 and 2006, the prison population rose from around 100,000 to 145,000.

Amnesty’s account of police violence there, you should note, itself relies on the official story — as usual. On which see “Resistance Followed By Death”: Truths, Partial Truths and Statistics.

I personally think this was less a matter of deciding to implement a repressive approach than it was of simply not standing in way of the hard men in their hog heaven — the hallmark of Alckmin’s political career, I think.

Governor Lembo:

O ex-governador de São Paulo, Cláudio Lembo (DEM), comentou nesta quinta-feira a decisão do governo José Serra (PSDB) de rever todas as estatísticas criminais do Estado desde 2004. A iniciativa nasce de uma nova contagem feita pela Febraban (Federação Brasileira de Bancos), que verificou ter ocorrido o dobro de roubos a bancos do que o número divulgado pelas gestões de Geraldo Alckmin (PSDB) e de Lembo.

Former governor Claudio Lembo commented this Thursday on the decision by the Serra government to review all criminal statistics in the state since 2004. The inititiative was prompted by a new accounting by the Brazilian Federation of Banks which shows that twice the number of bank robberies took place than publicly reported by the Alckmin and Lembo administrations.

Ao rever os dados, a própria Secretaria de Segurança Pública encontrou índices superiores até mesmo aos da Febraban. O atual secretário, Ronaldo Marzagão, determinou à Corregedoria da Polícia Civil que investigue o caso. Ele disse que tudo está sendo apurado, mas evitou falar em “má fé” dos ex-governantes.

Upon reviewing the data, the public safety department also found an incidence of bank robbery even higher than those found by Febraban. The current secretary, Ronaldo Marzagão, asked the internal affairs department of the state police to investigate. He said that everything will be looked into, but avoided speaking of “bad faith” on the part of the former governors.

My wife was in a bank robbery last November, at an Itaú branch right by the Vila Madalena subway station.

The wounded suspects later tried to hail a cab on the corner of our street.

Did you count that one?

Terra Magazine – Como o sr. vê a decisão do atual governo de SP que anuncia a revisão de todas as estatísticas?

How do you view the decision by the current state government to audit all the statistics?

Cláudio Lembo - Primeiro, eu não analiso esses critérios. Quem deve ser procurado é o ex-secretário, Saulo (de Castro Abreu Filho). Ele poderá dar as respostas. Mas nem Deus muda o passado; portanto, rever estatísticas não leva a nada, ainda mais quando isso é parte de intrigas internas do tucanato.

First of all, I am not privy to the reasons for the decision. You should ask former public safety secretary Saulo (de Castro Abreu Filho). He could answer your questions. But not even God can change the past, so reviewing statistics leads nowhere, especially when this is all part of internal intrigues among the Toucans [members of the PSDB political party.]

The notion that you do not need accurate benchmarks in order to measure progress toward goals must be one of those newfangled management theories that Mr. Alckmin is currrently studying at Harvard.

Mas o que o senhor quer dizer com intriga interna, qual seria o objetivo?

But what do you mean by internal intrigue, what would be the purpose?

Isso é obviamente algo para desconstruir o Geraldo. Querem dizer que ele mentiu e que a situação em seu governo foi pior do que imaginado e que agora eles irão arrumar.

This is obvious something they are doing to deconstruct Geraldo. They want to say that he lied and that the situation during his government was worse than previously imagined and that now they are going to fix things.

Lembo lobbied hard to have Serra keep on the Alckmin-Lembo public safety team, as I recall.

On which, see Sampa: The Broom vs. the Brushcut.

Hysterical virgin act: Lembo’s “perverse white minority” remarks during the May 2006 PCC crisis will be long remembered. Death squad members displayed their logos on the floor of the state assembly that week, as I recall.