CAT/C/39/2 page 61 Civil and Military Police), and from the analysis of that Report SENASP will evaluate the implementation of the following actions: i) acquisition of equipment for a kit to be distributed directly to the Corregedorias during the first half of next year; ii) qualification of police officers in administrative-disciplinary procedures, through the National Network of Remote Education, still during the current year; iii) setting up of a working group through ministerial act, composed of ten (10) corregedores from the civil and military police, representing the five regions of the country, to make effective the needed legislation and the procedural standardization, among other proposals that may be considered feasible and pragmatic. “180. Furthermore, the constitutional debate on the power of the Public Prosecutor’s Office to initiate independent investigations into allegations of torture is still pending. The Constitution has been interpreted by some as providing the Public Prosecutor’s Office with a more active role and allowing it to proceed with criminal investigations and indict officials involved in criminal activities, such as torture, in cases where there is sufficient prima facie evidence. Other commentators, including the police, claim that constitutional provisions require that a police inquiry is necessary and that preventing the causes of torture would be more appropriate. The Committee members consider that public prosecutors should be able to initiate cases rather than having to rely on evidence collected and forwarded by the police.” 256. The Public Prosecutor’s Office (Ministério Público) is the institution charged with the defense of the public order, the democratic regime and the inalienable social and individual interests. It has functional, administrative and budgetary autonomy. Its members enjoy the same impediments and guarantees as magistrates. On penal matters, the Prosecutor’s Office is entitled to public penal action and in order to exercise it its members are vested with privileges such as “exercise internal control of police activity” and “order investigation procedures and initiate police inquiry, with the indication of the legal grounds of its procedural manifestations” (arts. 127 and 129 VII and VIII of the Federal Constitution). On its part, the judicial police activity is incumbent on the civil (State) and federal police, which are charged with “verifying criminal infractions, except military” (art. 144, §§ 1 and 4 of the Federal Constitution). Thus there is no doubt that the Public Prosecutor’s office may, upon knowledge of a possible criminal infraction, order the carrying out of an investigation, request specific search and if already in possession of sufficient elements for offering a denunciation (that is, the initiation of the legal process) independently from the police investigation. 257. Thus, public prosecutors may offer denunciation (that is, initiate penal action in court) independently from the police investigation, if they possess sufficient elements that indicate the materiality of the offense and its authorship.56 The question of the power to investigate penal 56 “The initiation of a police investigation is not indispensable to the initiation of a public penal action, and the Public Prosecutor’s Office may utilize evidence in order to support its opinion. There is no impediment for the Public Prosecutor’s agent to gather other depositions when, having a factual knowledge of the circumstantial evidence of the authorship and materiality, he learns directly of any fact that deserves clarification” (Ing. 1.957), Rapp. Min. Carlos Velloso, DJ 11.11.05).