Cops have defended as a harmless tradition a video showing uniformed police officers burning crosses and doing "Nazi salutes" in a ceremony merging Nazi and Ku Klux clan imagery.
The video, filmed at night, shows a cross burning while a number of people stand in front of it, with police cars with their lights on visible in the background.
Baep commander speaks about the video in which police set fire to a cross in Sao Jose do Rio Preto in Brazil, undated. The video published Tuesday, April 15, 2025, shows a burning cross. Note: Image is a screenshot from video. (Newsflash/NX)
The video then cuts to two officers doing Nazi salutes.
Stunned internet users said it looked like the officers were performing some kind of Nazi "Ku Klux Klan ritual".
Police officers burn a cross and make gestures in a tone reminiscent of rituals of supremacist groups in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Newsflash/NX
And others worried if the officers, reportedly members of 9th Special Police Actions Battalion (BAEP) of Sao Jose do Rio Preto, in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo, were exposing themselves as Nazi fanatics.
The online backlash forced the Deputy Mayor of Sao Paulo, Ricardo Mello Araujo, 53, who is a retired colonel of the Military Police and former commander of the Rondas Ostensivas Tobias de Aguiar (ROTA), an elite tactical police unit, to speak up and explain the footage.
Mello Araujo said in a 16th April statement: "Whoever criticises [the police officers' gesture in the video] doesn't understand anything about the police."
He continued: "The images are from the conclusion of courses for elite troops that many start and few finish.
"In all of these courses, including the [American] SWAT, as they are very difficult to take and finish, there is this symbolism that each person will carry their cross individually.
"In these courses, you receive a cross and a number. No one is a captain, colonel or soldier anymore. You are Zero One, Zero Two, for example.
"So, those who manage to finish, burn the cross at graduation, as a symbol of survival and triumph over difficulties.
"Those who drop out place their helmet or cap on the cross and say goodbye to the training group. So, for those who managed to continue, the dropout or the person who left is someone who 'died' for that training.
"It's like this in all elite group courses in military forces. It works like this all over the world."
And regarding the raised arm gestures which have been compared to Nazi salutes, the deputy mayor said that they are in fact carried out when taking an oath and have been in use in the military police since its formation more than 190 years ago.
If true, this would mean that the gesture predates its adoption by Mussolini's fascist Italy and subsequently Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany.
Mello Araujo, whose son is also in the police force and is the fourth generation of the family to join the institution, said: "At these special forces graduations, you take an oath.
"The Military Police is the only one in the world where you say in your oath that you would give your life for society, if necessary.
"These are things that exist in military institutions not only in Sao Paulo, but in Brazil and throughout the world. There is no connection with anything wrong or bad, as some people want to make it seem."
The gestures are being investigated by the authorities.
(Joseph Golder/newsX)