Another Murder on the Streets of Jardins; Police, City Have No Strategy to Prevent the Next One

John Clayton Moreira Batista (left) was 19 years old, and was a waiter at Café Armani in Jardins. He was sitting with a friend at a sidewalk table on the corner of Rua da Consolação and Alameda Lorena on Friday night. Minutes later, he was lying in a pool of his own blood on the floor of a bar on Alameda Lorena, dying from multiple stab wounds. He'd been attacked at his table and chased down by a gang of "punks". It was about 8pm.

According to eyewitnesses, the gang of punks attacked the bar with a variety of weapons, causing patrons to flee in terror. It appears the event was totally unprovoked.

John Clayton died at Hospital das Clínicas, the same place where Gregor Landouar, a French tourist who was stabbed by a group of skinheads outside another bar a few blocks away, died two weeks ago.

I was appalled to read this news yesterday, and I am maybe even more appalled at the reaction by the police and the city. If these crimes were happening in Logan Circle in D.C., there would be angry protests, candlelight vigils at the crime scenes, and demands by the editorial pages of the major newspapers demanding that the police and the city government take immediate, visible and sustained actions to counter this wave of violent, senseless crimes and mobilize its resources to prevent them in the future. Indeed, every new killing would only provoke more and more societal outrage and pressure on the authorities to do more. If the killings continued still in Logan, people would be fired and accountability would be severe.

In São Paulo, however, rather than announcing what they would be doing differently in Jardins to crack down on this senseless, animalistic killing on our streets, the police made a point of denying that there was a "crime wave" in Jardins. The punk attack on the bar, they said, had nothing to do with the murder. The boy was killed in a "simple dispute among young people." (Gee, what an amazing coincidence! The boy was fleeing a widely-witnessed attack on a bar, and just happened to be stabbed to death as he fled, but from an unrelated matter??)

In the John Clayton murder, the city was able to make several arrests. But there is doubt as to whether they have apprehended the killer or killers. There still have been no announced leads, and no arrests, in the Landouar murder, and it seems that the local press has largely forgotten about it.

The young dead man was laid to rest today, and the scene at his funeral was one of bedlam and hysteria (my translation to English):

At the burial of John Clayton, who was from a humble family, the atmosphere was of great consternation and outrage, with a lot of crying, and a friend of John's arrived desperately screaming, "Come on, John, wake up!" and had to be restrained by the uncle of the victim, Ronilson Silva Pereira. “John was a very good and happy boy. He always was driven and worked since he was 15 years old. He had many friends and people liked him very much," his uncle said.

I have a question for the 78th Police District in Jardins, the Subprefeitura of Pinheiros, and the Mayor himself: how many more attacks, how many more senseless murders, until you do your damn jobs?