[8] Four officers had a direct role in de Souza's disappearance and subsequent torture, twelve stood guard, and eight were present but failed to help the victim.
[8] Major Santos was found to have bribed a Rocinha resident, Lucia Helena da Silva Batista, to lie in her eyewitness testimony of what happened to de Souza, linking the murder to a local drug trafficker rather than the military police.
[10] In June 2015, it was announced that investigations into de Souza's disappearance in response to new images from security cameras close to the UPP station in Rocinha.
They were created to wrest control of the favelas from gangs and militias back to the Brazilian government, effectively integrating favela residents into the formal city [13] The design of the UPPs addresses the issue of rampant police brutality and corruption in Rio by using only fresh recruits recently graduated from police academy and giving special training in human rights issues.
[13] Among the criticisms of the UPPs is the allegation that they possibly have a role in the rising number of missing persons in pacified favelas,[14] a concern highlighted by de Souza's disappearance in 2013.
At the same time, the number of missing persons in Rio's pacified favelas and its impoverished peripheral communities increased by 33 percent since 2007, one year before the creation of the UPPs.
[12] As global scrutiny is placed on Brazil's social maladies and the state's response to them in anticipation of the 2016 Olympic Games, critics of the UPPs purport that police forces are disguising resistance killings as disappearances in order to improve public perception.