An Accolade -Gonçalo Amaral
ASFIC - PJ Professional Association of Employees of the Judicial Police Criminal Investigation
Thursday, July 3, 2008
CONVERSATION BETWEEN POLICE ...
When, in late 1983 (now gone about 25 years) I and some colleagues, completed the training course at the School, were put on the Core Stage running in then SCITE / CICD, installed at the bottom of Rua Conde Redondo , there we find a group of police investigators whose characteristics, individual and group, and how you work, took us (at least to most of us) want there to be definitively placed.
In fact, motivation and dedication to service, enthusiasm and joy with which played its role, competence and professionalism they showed were for us graduates in the School of Clay, assured that the profession so that we started was translated a full activity of achievement and a magnificent career and a bright future.
Most of these colleagues were roughly our age, a little older than us, immediately preceding, and thus with the recently completed their training course.
Among them was Goncalo Amaral. Perhaps more hair and now possibly a little lighter. The rest was equal. Already when surprised in their delivery to the profession, competence, who demonstrated the confidence with which he worked, the courage with which ran throughout and faced all kinds of situations and opponents. Likewise, it was evident the willingness with which he faced setbacks and adversities of function as well as the tolerance that viewed the play, sometimes irreverent one or another colleague (and I say so, that conscience accuses me of having been not infrequently).
Later Goncalo would work in Faro and Ponta Delgada. Always with the personal and professional capacity availability to it characteristics. And in all the many valences that are now of the work of a researcher of the Judicial Police. Investigating homicides or collecting information about organized criminal networks. Analyzing documentation relating to complex financial transactions or capturing dangerous individuals. No escape difficulties or fading to setbacks. Giving face and going to struggle. Always.
Again in Lisbon and combating drug trafficking, was named Goncalo also as agent to lead a brigade of Research in DCITE Who was at that time in that department, remember that the results achieved by this brigade, under the charismatic leadership of Gonçalo Amaral as soon exceeded the average statistics. The figures obtained for himself and his men, either as individuals detained, either as a narcotic product or property and assets seized or even convictions achieved in Court marked an era in DCITE and constituted an example.
I know. I remember it well. Was there.
Build up the leadership of the Brigade with the proviso college student. And its characteristic shape of head, always direct and frontal, in a permanent leadership style and fully assumed, always present and always available, not impossible that, in the shortest amount of time allowed, graduating in law. Despite their previous training is Engineering.
We again find ourselves in the course of promoting the Subinspector. Again Goncalo has demonstrated its remarkable ability to work because they did this course, intensive and demanding, accumulated with the leadership of the Brigade of Research. Pat was also and once again, its significant ability to study, having completed the course in first place among 99 colleagues.
Would come later and logical and natural sequence of his career and his life journey competing at the Coordinator of Criminal Investigation, and as expected, was promoted to that functional category shortly after.
After ...
Well, about a year ago, we all watched, stunned, to a kind of spectacle hitherto unheard of among us. How Faith in automobiles in the past, certain media (mainly English, but unfortunately not only this) "melted" in the public square a man of Portuguese Judicial Police. Table Top Career Criminal Investigation. Our colleague and friend of many of us. Murder of a character as any other staff of this House had been the victim until then. And why?
Because, as was always his prerogative, Dr. Gonçalo Amaral, Coordinator of Criminal Investigation of the Judicial Police, was the struggle, strove assumed faced courageously and decisively, the difficulties and setbacks of a case of highly complex service and contours still, and perhaps forever undefined.
Perhaps for the first time in the history of the Judicial Police, a researcher is exposed in the public square and private life probed. Just to be investigating a case suspicious. To be working. Perhaps the Portuguese State, the Government, our Judicial Police, should have mechanisms to protect their representatives in situations like this. To protect them in the exercise of their profession for the benefit of the Public Service. Perhaps we all, professional colleagues, we should have taken in, and living up to the famous, traditional and much-vaunted "Spirit Body" saying peculiar to our "house", we should be in, somehow manifested in support of Dr . Gonçalo Amaral.
None of that happened. Gonçalo stood alone.
If this strategy to catch tomorrow, against powerful and well-connected defendants may be other researchers to suffer this ordeal skin. Could be any of us. And it can, somehow, be the end of the criminal investigation. At least the way we envision and develop.
Let this case serve on discussion. And sample. And allow us to create ways to avoid a repeat. The ASFICPJ itself should perhaps consider, serious, conscientious and thoroughly, and serene and constructive way, this whole situation. It is also their duty.
Gonçalo friend, I sincerely regret your departure Judicial Police, which seems too early because I admit I could give more to the cause of Society, Justice and Public Service. Our "Home", moreover, does not have many features, quality and quantity, to afford to the non-viability or worse, leaving the waste.
It remains for me, given the reality of the facts, thank you for your friendship and wish you all the best and every success in the new stage of your life I decided to start.
Lisbon, 03 July 2008
John Fernandes Figueira
Associate ASFIC / PJ paragraph. 711
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