Officer accused of brutality acquited, while victim convicted

The case gained notoriety after videos of the incident were circulated on social media.

The Sintra court this week convicted Cláudia Simões of biting police officer Carlos Canha, while the policeman was acquitted of charges of assault in the arrest of this woman.

The case dates back to January 2020. Cláudia Simões’ youngest daughter, who was eight at the time, forgot her bus pass. There was a dispute between passengers and the driver and, once at the destination, the driver called the police. After a few tense moments, officer Carlos Canha decided to immobilise Cláudia Simões” because she “refused to be identified”.

Carlos Canha was charged at the time with three offences of aggravated assault, three offences of aggravated kidnapping, one offence of aggravated insult and one offence of abuse of power, while fellow police officers João Gouveia and Fernando Rodrigues were charged with one offence of abuse of power for failing to act to prevent their colleague’s alleged assaults. 

Cláudia Simões was charged with a crime of offence against qualified integrity.

As it turned out, Carlos Canha was ‘absolved’ of all charges in relation to Cláudia Simões. However, he was convicted on the other two assault/kidnapping charges, as well as being found guilty of ‘aggravated insult’ and abuse of power.

“Nobody hurt Cláudia Simões. Cláudia Simões didn’t want to pay her daughter’s fare, she deliberately frightened the driver, refused to identify herself, assaulted him and pushed him. She used impossible simulations and aggression. The daughter's tears are owed to her mother,” judge Catarina Pires said, noting that the videos recorded and then shared on social media “are very revealing of the woman's violent and false attitude”.

During the trial, Simões said that she believes she would have died had she not bitten agent Canha, three times on the arm. 

The case gripped portuguese public opinion after images of the event showed up on social media (you can them here, but be cautioned about their violent content).

The two other police agents were absolved of their charges, with the court ruling that they had not acted outside the law in the exercise of their duties.

“Justice is coloured”

In a statement issued on Monday, the NGO SOS Racism expressed outrage by the outcome of the case: “This is proof that justice in Portugal is coloured and that racism enjoys institutional protection. This verdict normalises racist police violence.”

The members of the non-profit organisation maintain that “the perpetrators benefited from the corporatist support of the police unions and the acquiescence of their own hierarchy”. And that, in the trial, “the system took a side and doubled the force of the violence and institutional racism to which Cláudia Simões was subjected".

"The entire trial was an exercise in psychological and moral torture against Cláudia Simões," reads the press release. "An unacceptable and revolting festival of vexatious indignities, with jokes about the victim's hair loss, repeated demands to remove her wig in the middle of the courtroom, offensive corrections to the way she sat and defamatory insinuations about the victim's mythomania and opportunism."

Throughout the trial, the activists noted that "judges, prosecutors and the officers' lawyers insistently reaffirmed that they were not judging a crime of racism". And they felt that "they didn't stop judging anti-racism". "When she read out the sentence, the judge once again attacked the anti-racist movement and the intellectuals who had the courage to denounce the racist violence of the attacks on Cláudia Simões and to support her."