Group: Brazil Cops Killed 11k in 6 Years

(AP)  Police in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo have killed more than 11,000 people in the past six years, many execution-style, according to a report released Tuesday by Human Rights Watch.

Few of the officers have been charged in the extrajudicial killings, which are often labeled in police reports as the deaths of suspects who resisted arrest, the report said.

The 122-page declaration echoes a 2008 United Nations' finding that police throughout Brazil were responsible for a "significant portion" of 48,000 slayings the year before.

"Extrajudicial killing of criminal suspects is not the answer to violent crime," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. "The residents of Rio and Sao Paulo need more effective policing, not more violence from the police."

Isabel Figueiredo, Brazil's coordinator-general of human rights and public safety, acknowledged that police violence is a widespread problem and "it concerns the federal government a great deal."

Figueiredo said authorities have launched a series of initiatives to confront the problem, including training police to respect human rights and the appropriate use of force, in addition to the purchase of less-lethal weapons for state police forces.

Security forces "have begun to understand that instead of solving the problem, confronting criminals with weapons leads to casualties on both sides," she said.

Officials from the Rio and Sao Paulo police departments did not comment.

But Rio state Public Safety Director Jose Beltrame, in charge of the city's armed security forces, previously took issue with the 2008 U.N. report, saying critics don't recognize that his officers must constantly confront drug gangs who rule over slums and are armed with military rifles, grenades and anti-aircraft weapons.

"We have to deal with something few others face: armed combat with drug traffickers who are equipped with heavy weapons coming from abroad," Beltrame said in an October interview with The Associated Press. "That is a unique attribute our police deal with."

He spoke after Rio gangs had unleashed a wave of violence in which they downed a police helicopter, killing three of the six officers aboard - just a mile (two kilometers) from the Maracana stadium, where the 2016 Olympics' opening and closing ceremonies and the 2014 World Cup final will be held.

The Human Rights Watch report examined 51 cases in Rio and Sao Paulo in which it seemed that police had killed an alleged criminal, but then reported the victim died while resisting arrest.

In 33 cases, forensic evidence "was at odds with the official version of what took place" - including 17 cases in which autopsies indicated police shot the person at point-blank range, the report said, adding that "the 51 cases do not represent the totality of potential extrajudicial killings, but are indicative of a much broader problem."

Using government statistics, the report noted that police have killed more than 11,000 people in Sao Paulo and Rio since 2003. In Rio, the killings reached a high of 1,330 in 2007.

The report also states that Rio police killed one of every 23 people arrested, and Sao Paulo police one of every 348 in 2008. In comparison, police in the U.S. killed one of every 37,000 people arrested that year.

The report recommends creating specialized units within state prosecutors' offices to investigate "resistance" killings and ensure that officers responsible for extrajudicial executions are brought to justice.

[Sloughfoot]

Brazil's solution to prison crowding I guess. Must work for them, for Brazil is the most rapidly developing Nation in the Western Hemisphere.

Many Brazilian dissidents will attack Brazil from all directions because of it's success, However, direct parallels of developemnt in Brazil today can be made to those of the U.S. in the 19th century and Canada in the 20th Century.

[Ceres6]

For a while many people thought that Brazil was a paradise. When five people are executed every 24 hours by the police just in Rio de Janeiro, it is an indication that Brazilian society is quite violent. And they are the people we are asking to help save the planet. And what the Brazilians are saying: if you do not pay us $15 billion now, we will accelerate the obliteration of the Amazon forest.

[payasyougo]

Is it working?

[babooph]

Birth control may help A LOT !

[bubbadubba]

And we thought Al Qaida was bad?
LOL

[nowhiningallowed]

How about Human Rights Watch going to areas where gangs and thugs continue terrorizing civilized individuals and charge these types with violations against humanity and protest this human outrage?

[novamba]

ABsolutely spot on post...HRW only goes after the low hanging fruit, the obvious perpetrators forgetting the other 95% of the coin...

[KabulsHere-0003]

"Human Rights Watch Criticizes Police for Host City of 2016 Olympics Rio de Janeiro"



These so called "human rights groups" only care for the "rights" of the criminals.They dont give a shiit for the rights of the victims.

[berlinfoto-2009]

In the United States, I believe this is correct there are over SIX THOUSAND UNSOLVED MURDERS every year.
Is there the most remote possibility? that some, or even a large portion of these are, POLICE EXTRA-LEAGAL KILLINGS?

[sonofsummarex]

maybe they should make extrajudicial killings an olympic sport!

[GFRCBS]

It is notable that Brazil has stricter gun-control laws than the United States but a significantly higher incidence of gun crime.

If the Brazilian government trusted their law-abiding citizens to carry weapons it is likely that the ability of the drug gangs to intimidate the innocent would be diminished.

Unfortunately it seems that the only civilians who are allowed to carry guns in Brazil are members of drug gangs.