Overview
- Raquel Lyra, who announced an internal investigation Wednesday, called the use of images of Duda Salabert and Érika Hilton by Pernambuco’s Civil Police inadmissible.
- The public defender’s office found the deputies’ photos in a six-image album tied to a cellphone robbery in Recife on February 24, 2025, with the photo recognition carried out on April 8, 2025.
- The Defensoria Pública said the selection relied on race and gender identity rather than individualized similarity, and it reported that the court nullified the photographic recognition in the case.
- Salabert asked the state security chief to explain the criteria used, remove both images from suspect databases, and identify who assembled the album, and she and Hilton called the practice institutional racism and transfobia.
- The state’s oversight unit says it started a preliminary probe, yet police have not answered how the photos were chosen, a gap that matters because Brazil’s rules require look‑alike fillers to avoid wrongful identifications.