No Room for Police Support of the Dictatorship in Brazil

In another nice step in the human rights crusade in Brazil, an officer was fired supporting Brazil's military dictatorship in a speech he offered to his troops in April. Tenente-Coronel Antõnio Borges Germano declared before his subordinates on April 17th that torture was a totally acceptable practice and he basically missed the good old days of Brazil's dictatorship (1964-1985), all in an effort to "motivate the troops" (his own words).

Fortunately, the military police (which are more like militarized police than like the MPs of the U.S.) and Rio's governor, Sérgio Cabral, have no such use for authority figures who yearn for the dictatorship for any reason and who support torture, lamenting the fact they have to work "within the law", so after this story broke yesterday, Germano finds himself unemployed today.

Certainly, there are other officers in the police who may share his opinions, and torture of the poor (who have little recourse to legal protection or civil rights) continues in Brazil, but it's good to see the local government taking a stand and saying, "We will not tolerate such attitudes."