Delegate says death at Carrefour was not racism

The delegate responsible for the investigation of the murder of João Alberto Silveira Freitas, a 40-year-old black man who was beaten to death by security guards at a Carrefour in Porto Alegre last night (11/19), told the Folha de S.Paulo that it’s not about racism.

Roberta Bertoldo, from the 2nd Homicide and Personal Protection Police Station in Porto Alegre, however, did not explain why the case would not be classified as racism. The investigation investigates the motivation for the attacks.

The head of the Civil Police, Nadine Anflor, said that it is impossible to deny that structural racism exists, but that it is premature at this moment to clarify the case and that the motivation is being investigated.

According to her, the infraction in flagrante delicto occurs for the immediately identified conducts. “At the moment, what we have is a homicide, in principle with three qualifiers: futile reason, impossibility of defending the victim and the cause of death by asphyxiation. It was what was possible to identify through the videos and information collected so far. Now, if in the sequence of the investigation, we gather elements that prove that the motivation of the crime is related to an issue of racial discrimination, due to the fact that the victim is a black man, at the conclusion of the investigation the qualifier of futile reason will be changed to bad reason It is the legal form provided for in the Legislation to hold this type of conduct accountable, “he told the Leaf.