Independent inspectors say that preliminary investigations are irregular
When there is no inquiry, the police chief does what in police terms is referred as "preliminary investigation," which in fact is illegal. RCG was shot dead in the Parolin favela on July 31st 2010. Four days later, the Homicide Unit said that they had found a suspect. The case (number 14.730/10) was assigned to the 2nd Police District. The rule is that the Homicide Unit only takes care of cases where killer is unknown. When the author is known, the Homicide Unit hands over the case to one of the 13 district units based throughout the city.
However, the 2nd Police District said that it could not continue the investigation, as the Homicide Unit had already heard a suspect. Therefore, they believed that the inquiry had been set up.
The case returned to the Homicide Unit which justified itself saying that the interviews had been done without the formalization of the inquiry "to facilitate" the work of the district policemen. If this was not to be allowed, "it is obvious that the police would stop questioning suspects." In late November 2010, Civil Police assistant inspector Sérgio Taborda, informed the units that any type of preliminary investigation is illegal according to the Brazilian law and investigating without an inquiry being set up does not make any sense. The case went back to the Homicide Unit, which set up the inquiry on November 29th, four months after the murder took place.
82
... It is the number of days that it takes on average to interview a witness.
20
...It is the number of inquiries had two-year delays or more to do the first report.
303
... It is the number of cases that had a witness heard by the police later than a month after the crime took place.
Specialists all agree: to solve a crime, it is crucial to act quickly, especially when it comes to interview the people who may know something about the crime. As time passes, fewer the chances are to find the author of the crime. Witnesses forget some detail, the murderer has time to threaten those who could incriminate him and also has more opportunities to flee.
However, the study carried out by the reporters from Gazeta do Povo, based on the inquiries of the homicides that occurred between 2010 and 2013 in Curitiba, shows that the police did not always act with the required speed. Based on the one thousand cases of homicides analyzed throughout the reportage, police took on average four months to set up an inquiry and hear the first witness.
In 303 cases, the first testimony only took place more than a month after the crime occurred. In 20 cases, it took more than a year for the first witness to be interviewed. There are some extreme cases such as inquiry number 329/2010 for instance. Construction builder S.S was murdered in March 2010 in the Industrial City neighborhood. The 25 year old man was killed while sitting on the pavement with some friends. In August 2012, twenty eight months later after the murder, the police chief ordered to localize the victim's mother and cousin who witnessed the crime. The victim's cousin happened to be the first witness to be interviewed by officers at the police station in January 2013. Two years and a half after the crime took place, the main suspect was murdered while S.S´s case remain unsolved.
"Interviewing witnesses some months after the crime took place is the enactment of the police's failure. There is no possible justification for this," says José Vicente da Silva Filho, professor at the Safety Study Center of the Military Police of São Paulo.
ExceptionThe first testimony was collected within the first three days following the murder in only a third of the cases (344 investigations.) In another 105 homicides, the police heard at least one person within the first week following the crime.
According to prosecutor Marcelo Balzer Correia, from the first Jury Trial Court, the sheriff does not need to finalize the inquiry within the 30 day deadline, but he at least needs to hear the witnesses. "We need to hear people quickly, because if we don´t, they may move out as afraid of what they witnessed. Therefore, it will be nearly impossible to localize them," he affirms.
Two years later, the police fails the localize the victim´s houseOn May 31st 2012, two investigators from the Homicide Unit reported on a case that took place in the Tatuquara neighborhood. They went to a known as Terra Santa as an attempt to meet the witnesses of inquiry 2.277/10. The case was set up after a murder took place in January 2010. Until then, twenty eight months after the homicide, the only testimony collected by the police was of the victim's wife, who did not say much about the case.
Hearing more witnesses was fundamental, but the police failed to do so. The reason: the squatters had been deported by the Office of Public Housing of Curitiba (Cohab). The sheriff ordered to shut down the case as he felt unable to solve the crime.
This is not an isolated situation. In November 2012, another pair of investigators went to the Sítio Cercado neighborhood in order to find witnesses. They were working on the inquiry number 11.447/10 which dealt with the death of ACN. The murder had taken place more than two years earlier, in August 2008, and the police officers came to the same conclusion: the squatters had been removed. The police officers even failed to localize the victim´s house. The old Oito Street, after so much time, had been renamed and no one knew where the house was.
The inquiry was set up 1000 days after the crimeFebruary 16th, 2010. 10 AM. Firefighters pulled a dead body from the Atuba River. The criminal experts were present and the corpse, which featured four bullet wounds, was sent for necropsy at the Coroner Office. The investigation remained frozen and showed no sign of advancement. The document to set up the inquiry can be seen as a symptom of the slowness of the police: it is dated of January 7th 2013, therefore 1,056 days after the body was found. Throughout all this time, not a single witness was interviewed by the police and no further exams were ordered to identify the victim.
Similar occurrences took place in inquiry number 3.428/10. CP was killed in April 2010. Next to her body was found a cell-phone which could have been analyzed to collect the phone numbers of parents and friends. But the inquiry lacked the identity of who examined the telephone.
In May, one of the investigators did a report using information he had received from the sister's victim without writing down her contact. The police chief therefore ordered to set up an inquiry, The first summon, which took place as late as in November 2012, was not fulfilled. Because of this, the first witness statement was taken on March 20th 2013, nearly three years after the victim's death.