Goncalo Amaral ... a policeman's policeman ...

When, in late 1983 (some 25 years ago) I and some colleagues, completed the training course in the School, we were placed in Training Group, then SCITE / CICD, at the end of the street Conde de Redondo. We found there a group of police investigators whose characteristics, individual and in group, and the way they worked, led us (at least most of us) to want to be there placed permanently.

Indeed, the motivation and dedication to service, the enthusiasm and joy with which they played their roles, the competence and professionalism that they demonstrated were for us, new trainees of the School of Barro, the assurance that the occupation we were beginning would translate in an activity full of achievement and a great career and a bright future.

Many of those colleagues of ours were about our age, little older than us, from the course that immediately preceded ours and thus with their training recently completed.

Among them was the Gonçalo Amaral. Perhaps with more hair than now, and possibly a little less heavy. For the rest, he was the same. Already at that time he surprised us with his commitment to the profession, which showed the competence, the assurance with which he worked, the courage with which he would go anywhere and face all sorts of situations and opponents. Similarly, it was striking the good grace with which he faced setbacks and adversities of the function, and the tolerance with which he accepted the jokes, sometimes irreverent, of some colleague (and I can say it, because my conscience accuses me of having been the one, quite a few times).

Later Gonçalo would work in Faro and in Ponta Delgada. Always with the personal availability and professional capability that are his characteristics. And in all the many aspects that are today's work of an investigator of the Judiciary Police. Investigating murders or gathering information on organized criminal networks. Analysing documentation on complex financial movements or capturing dangerous individuals. Without evading difficulties nor losing courage when facing setbacks. Being frontal and going to fight. Always.

Again in Lisbon and in the fight to drug trafficking, Gonçalo was indicated, even as an agent, to head a Investigation Brigade in the DCITE. Those that were then in that department, will recall that the results achieved by the Brigade, under the charismatic leadership of Gonçalo Amaral, soon exceeded the average statistics. The figures obtained by him and his men, either on the numbers of arrests, either on the amount of narcotic or goods and assets seized, or even on the convictions achieved in Court marked a time in the DCITE and set an example.

I know. I remember well. It was there.
He accumulated the leadership of the Brigade with the condition of university student. And his characteristic style of leadership, taking consistent and full responsibility, ever present and available, did not prevent him obtaining a law licence, in the shortest possible time allowed. Despite his previous training in Engineering.

We found ourselves in the course of promotion to Subinspector. Again Gonçalo demonstrated his remarkable work capacity because he did this course, intensive and demanding, in combination with the leadership of the Brigade of Investigation. Patent was, also, once again, his significant ability to study and he concluded the course in the first place among 99 colleagues.
Later, as a logical and natural sequence of his professional career and his life, he would compete for Coordinator of Criminal Investigation and, as expected, be promoted to that category shortly afterwards.

Then...
Well, about a year ago, we watched, amazed, a kind of show hitherto unheard among us. As in the autosdafe of the past, some media (mainly British, but unfortunately not only) "destroyed" in public a man of the Portuguese Judiciary Police. A top cadre of the career of Criminal Investigation. Our colleague, and friend of many of us. A character assassination like no other employee of this house had been victim before. Why?
Because, as has always been his hallmark, Dr. Goncalo Amaral, Coordinator of Criminal Investigation of the Judiciary Police, went to fight, committed himself, faced, with courage and decision, the difficulties and setbacks of an extremely complex case whose contours are still, and perhaps forever, undefined .

Perhaps for the first time in the history of Judiciary Police, an investigator is exposed in the public square and his privacy assaulted. Only because he was investigating a suspected case. Because he was working. Perhaps the Portuguese state, the government, our Judiciary Police should have mechanisms to protect their representatives in situations like this. To protect them in the exercise of their professional activity in the Public Service. Perhaps all of us, his co-workers, should have taken it up to us, and doing justice to the famous, traditional and so bandied about "Esprit de Corps" that they say is characteristic of our "House", we ought to have, in some way, expressed our support to Dr . Gonçalo Amaral.

Nothing of this has happened. Gonçalo was left alone.
If this strategy catches in the future, facing powerful and well connected defendants, maybe other investigators will be the object of this ordeal. It could be any of us. And that could be, somehow, the end of the criminal investigation. At least the way we envision it and develop it.

May this case serve as a subject of reflection. And as an example. And may it help us create ways to avoid a repetition. The very ASFICPJ should, perhaps, analyse, seriously, conscientiously and thoroughly, in a serene and constructive way, this whole situation. It is also their obligation.

Gonçalo, my friend, I regret sincerely your exit of the Judiciary Police, which seems to me too early because I admit that you could give more to the cause of the Society, Justice and Public Service. Our "House", moreover, does not have many resources, in quality and quantity, to afford to not put them to profit or, even worse, to leave them to waste.

It remains for me, faced with the facts, to thank you for your friendship and wish you all the best and every success in the new stage of life that you have decided to start.