Investigation
Article reserved for subscribers
Between camaraderie and sharing of “intervention techniques”, agents from French elite units but also from companies of the police prefecture have exchanged several times with their Brazilian counterparts, including the bloody “Bope”. Some of their members have come in return to train in France.
In a barracks of a Brazilian military police battalion, a Parisian police officer, Steve L., poses proudly in front of a helicopter, with his unit’s flag in his hands. The photo was posted in June 2022 by the Instagram account of the Amicale de la Compagnie de Sécurisation et d’Intervention de Paris (CSI 75), and liked by one of the highest officials of the police prefecture, the director of public order and traffic, Jérôme Foucaud. The photo is accompanied by this caption: “Internship in Brazil for one of the CSI 75 personnel with the aim of learning how to patrol in high-risk environments (such as favelas, etc.)” In other photos, published a few days earlier by the Special Actions Battalion (Baep) of the military police of Campinas, near São Paulo, we see the same agent, with the “National Police” patch on his arm, in action during exercises carried out with this unit.
The military police, specific to each state in Brazil, are responsible for public security. They include battalions responsible for “special operations” that have accumulated accusations of violence, summary executions and bloodshed. The best known of these is the “Bope” whose insignia represents a skull with a dagger planted in it, against a background of crossed pistols. The former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, in power from 2019 to 2022, had made these battalions an emblem of his repressive policy. In
