Paulista elite take selfies with police who massacre poor people in Alemão.

Terezinha de Jesus and her 10-year-old son, Eduardo, were inside their home in the Alemão slum in Rio de Janeiro when the boy left her side and went to the front door to talk to friends. At that moment, the police were invading the community, shooting, supposedly to "react," and one of the bullets hit the child, who died instantly.

Desperate, Terezinha ran out into the street in time to catch the shooter in the act. She looked the killer in the eye and called the beast a "coward." At that moment, she was threatened.

“He said: since I killed the son, I can kill the mother too. I screamed that he had ended my son's life and I even hit him. They shot from less than 10 meters and they knew it was a child,” said Terezinha, crying.

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José Maria Ferreira de Sousa, Eduardo's father, moments later also experienced a bit of the military police's "courtesy," as he told the press:

– When I went to help my son, the police officer said I was a thug just like him. He said he killed a thug who was the son of a thug.

The community, assaulted by the police, revolted and organized a protest, the least that could be expected. The death of the boy Eduardo was a threat to all the children of Alemão.

In addition to taking the boy's life, the police did not tolerate the protest. The demonstrators were repressed with tear gas and rubber bullets.

Let's go back a few weeks in time. Now it's March 15, 2015. The location is Paulista Avenue, in São Paulo. There, another community has gathered, which, unlike the one where the life of a 10-year-old member was stolen and who couldn't even complain, has no complaints against the police.

The reasons for this difference in attitude between the citizens of Morro do Alemão and those who live around Avenida Paulista within a radius of several dozen kilometers are not only due to the difference in skin color and income level of the two communities, but also to the way the police operate in the two regions.

No one will ever see the police firing indiscriminately on Paulista Avenue or in the surrounding area. The police officers assigned to work there know very well how to act. Even when crimes occur, they take every possible precaution, even if attacked with gunfire; they would rarely return fire; they would try to protect themselves to avoid putting the local population at risk.

For the immense Alemão community, probably much larger than the one surrounding Paulista Avenue, police are synonymous with oppression, risk to life, and humiliation; for the community on the hill where the most Paulista of avenues is located, police are a source of admiration, as seen in the avalanche of selfies with police officers on March 15th.