Brazil police return to work after strike triggers panic

BRASILIA: “Everything was closed, and we all stayed at home, afraid to go out into the streets,” said a resident of Vilha Velha, Espirito Santo, to Arab News in an interview.
Around 600 military police returned to work in Espirito Santo on Saturday afternoon, as talks continue to try to end the strike of these police officers that is now more than a week old.
The police have been holed up in their barracks, with their wives and other relatives blocking the entrances. Per the Brazilian Constitution, military police are forbidden to strike.
In Brazil, the police forces are spilt between the military police that patrol the streets and arrest criminals in the act, and the civil police who investigate crimes.
“All the shops have been closed for days, and when a supermarket opens for a few hours there is a rush of people going there to buy food,” recounted Gloria Menezes Gripp. She said even the bakeries in her neighborhood were afraid to open after one near her house was robbed in broad daylight.
Schools, universities, shops and even the emergency rooms of major hospitals have all been closed down during the strike. Buses stopped running for several days, as their drivers were afraid of being held-up.
But this has not stopped many stores from being broken into and looted during the day. Television reporters have shown looters riding off on motorcycles with big TVs and other goods stolen from shops.
Some of the looters have been recognized and after their real identities and photos were spread via WhatsApp, some of them were seen returning stolen goods to police stations.
“I was bitten by a neighbor’s dog, and I could not get medical treatment as all the emergency rooms were closed,” Gripp said, showing her bite mark. She managed to get a flight out of Vitoria to Brasilia on Friday morning.
The federal government has deployed more than 2,000 troops in Espirito Santo to patrol the streets, but most residents of the large cities say they do not see them on the streets.
“I haven’t seen a single soldier in my area, as I think they stay in the more dangerous areas,” said Gripp. There have been 137 murders in the state since the strike started on Feb. 4.
The military police are demanding a salary adjustment of 43 percent, claiming that they have not even received pay corrections for inflation in the past three years. Their wives holding up signs at protests claim that they are the worst paid military police in the country, but statistics prove otherwise.
Epoca newsweekly this week published figures showing that Espirito Santo ranks 14th out of 21 states in terms of military police pay, with the average salary being R$3,085 ($990).
Espirito Santo is a small coastal state with only 3.8 million inhabitants. Its main sources of revenue come from offshore oil wells, coffee plantations and tourism. Espirito Santo Gov. Paulo Hartung is serving his third term and is a fiscal conservative, holding public spending so as not to plunge the state into debt, unlike neighboring Rio de Janeiro, which is in a fiscal mess.
He is taking a hard-line in the negotiations with the military police, and has threatened to sack more than 700 of the striking policemen. There are around 11,000 military police in the state.