PSP director says filing a criminal complaint with RTP over ‘cartoon’ was ‘difficult decision’

PSP national director Manuel Magina da Silva admitted this Thursday that filing a lawsuit against the RTP was a “difficult decision” because of a “cartoon” about racism in the security forces.

“This is not something we would like to do, as is logical, with any media body,” Magina da Silva told reporters on the sidelines of the opening of the Public Security Police Museum in Lisbon.

When asked if this decision was motivated by the dissatisfaction of the police officers, the person in charge replied that this was not the reason.

“The people’s director often makes very difficult decisions, but he must make them. If I was here to try to please everyone, I would be selling ice cream instead of being the director of the PSP,” he remarked.

Declining to comment on the decision, Magina da Silva sent an explanation to the statement released this week by PSP and said she was awaiting the outcome of the investigation.

On Monday, the PSP filed a criminal complaint with the Ministry of Public Administration (MP) over a “cartoon” released by the RTP deploring “offensive language” and stressing that freedom of expression “is not an absolute right.”

Then, in a security statement, they said that they also complained to the Social Communications Regulatory Authority (ERC) and the Commission for the Licensing of Professional Journalists (CCPJ), although cartoonist Cristina Sampaio does not have a journalistic license (Christina Sampaio is licensed in painting, illustrator and graphics ), given that the “cartoon” “spreads false facts that can offend the credibility, prestige and credibility of the PSP.”

Shown last Friday in the team’s weekly Spam Cartoon feature on RTP, an animated cartoon titled “Shooting Career” shows a policeman shooting at a target with increasing intensity. At the end, targets are shown that have darkened due to the aggression of the policeman.

A “static” version of the same “cartoon” was published on Sunday in the newspaper Público.

On Saturday, the Public Security Police (PSP) National Career Career Union (SNCC) opened a criminal case against the authors of the cartoon, as well as against the RTP, because it understands that “there is, clearly, the intention to denigrate all police officers, portraying them as xenophobes and racists” .

Lusa contacted illustrator Andre Carrillo, co-founder with João Paulo Cotrim of Spam Cartoon — a 30-second microprogram of the same name in which “cartoons” see current events — felt that the complaint “doesn’t really make sense” because “cartoon” “has nothing to do with either PSP or Portuguese reality.”

“We have been working at RTP since 2017, and the cartoon is always made in the context of national and international current events, in this case it is international. This is connected with an incident in France, the death of a young Frenchman. at the hands of the police, who later caused several riots throughout the country,” explained Andre Carrillo.