According to Mayor Fernando Haddad, almost all frequent police raids in Favela do Moinho slum in São Paulo, Brazil are recorded, edited and documented by the slum youth. The practice is spreading to other peripheral neighborhoods such as Heliopolis, Paraisópolis, Brasilândia and Pantanal Garden, to film police abuse, meetings with authorities and repossessions. Soon after the incidents everything is shared on social networks.

With $80,000 received from a program of the Municipal Culture, Favela do Moinho slum leaders bought three cameras, tripod, projector light and the editing equipment. Thirty young people received training this year for filming with the guidance of community leaders, NGOs, lawyers and defenders of the public.

When a Military Police car enters the occupation located beside the train tracks of the São Paulo Metropolitan Train Company (CPTM) and under the Rudge bridge, young professionals equipped with cameras equipped with microphones and light projectors appear. They are teenagers like Alessandra de Jesus, 15, Paul Ivaldo, 13, and Andrew Ferreira, 16, who participated in the audiovisual training project “Moinhos de Imagem”.

"The problem is that the PM does not understand that filming is completely legal. The very next day Andrew was arrested just because he was filming an inspection in the bars of the community of Sé, according to the activist and photographer Caio Castor, 31, one of the coordinators of the NGO “Moinho Vive”. "After it was over the police took the boy and wanted to see what was in his camera," says Castor. "The video serves as legal, often irrefutable evidence of non-marking abuse, like a slap on the face or verbal insults.

Link to article in Portugues