Video of military police officer throwing man off bridge sparks anger in Brazil

By Abel Alvarado, CNN

(CNN) — A military police officer has been arrested in Brazil after a video emerged of him throwing a civilian over a bridge in Sao Paulo on Monday, sparking protests in the city.

The video, which was shared widely on social media and the Brazilian press, showed an officer grabbing a civilian by the shirt and walking him towards the side of a bridge. Moments later, the officer lifts the man – who appears unarmed and not applying any resistance – and pushes him over the edge.

CNN has not been able to independently verify the video.

The state’s public ministry said the incident was “appalling and absolutely unacceptable” in a statement posted Tuesday.

“There is no other way to classify the images of the moment in which a military police officer throws a man from the top of a bridge,” the public ministry said, adding that in the video it is “evident that the suspect was already subdued by security agents, who had the functional duty of taking him, intact, to a police station so that the incident could be recorded.”

An arrest warrant was issued for the officer, Luan Felipe Alves, who was taken into custody early Thursday, state media Agencia Brasil reported. He was later ordered to remain under preventive detention by Sao Paulo’s military court as investigations around the incident are conducted, Agencia Brasil added.

According to CNN Brasil, Alves told the military court his objective was to immobilize the man for evading a police approach and to throw him on the ground, not over the bridge.

The man is believed to have survived the fall, and authorities are currently searching for him for questioning, according to Agencia Brasil.

It is unclear what charges Alves may be facing but his legal team said in a statement that his arrest “demonstrates that there is an anticipation of guilt.”

“The police officer is at the disposal of the courts, but the preventive detention only responded to a social outcry,” said the statement obtained by CNN Brasil. Alves’ legal team also told CNN Brasil his arrest does not “meet the requirements” and they are planning to request his release.

The state’s military police removed several officers from their main duties, including Alves, while the incident and the officers are investigated, Agencia Brasil reports.

“I have ordered the immediate removal of the police officers involved in this regrettable scene,” Secretary of Public Security of the State of Sao Paulo, Guilherme Derrite, said Tuesday in a video post on X, adding that the “this type of attitude” differs from the mission of the military police.

The incident hit a nerve in the city where there has been growing public anger over police violence, including an incident where an off-duty policeman killed a man for allegedly stealing soap from a market, Reuters reported.

A protest against police violence broke out on Thursday in Sao Paulo, where demonstrators demanded for Derrite’s resignation, according to Reuters. “We really need our voices to be heard. We need to fight more and more. We need to take to the streets to expose the police which are so violent in the state of Sao Paulo and in Brazil,” one protester told Reuters.

In an interview with CNN Brasil, the general commander of the Sao Paulo Military Police Cássio Araújo de Freitas said his internal affairs division is investigating the incidents of alleged police violence.

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