HomeNewsBriefBrazil Police Killings Rise During Coronavirus Pandemic
BRIEF

Brazil Police Killings Rise During Coronavirus Pandemic

BRAZIL / 2 JUL 2020 BY ZACHARY GOODWIN EN

The states of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro recorded upticks in the number of killings by Brazilian police during the first months of 2020, even while crime rates plunged and coronavirus cases surged.

According to a June 23 story in O Globo, police in the state of São Paulo killed 381 people between January and April of this year, or approximately one person every 7.5 hours.

This marks a 30 percent increase in police killings from 2019, when police units across São Paulo state were responsible for 291 deaths across the same four months.

SEE ALSO: Police Exercise License to Kill in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro

The change in the state of Rio de Janeiro is less drastic: a one percent increase in police killings during the first five months of 2020 when compared to last year, according to the Public Security Institute (Instituto de Segurança Pública – ISP).

The 741 deaths, however, put Rio police forces on pace to match or slightly exceed their most lethal year on record in 2019, when 1,814 people were killed.

What's more, the bloodshed at the hands of police has continued despite a June 5 order from Brazil’s Supreme Court (Supremo Tribunal Federal – STF) that police halt their operations in the overcrowded and poor favelas lining the city of Rio’s perimeter. The judge cited concerns that the operations would spread the virus.

Yet the night after the injunction order, officers fired shots in the city’s Complexo do Alemão favela, residents told UOL -- the same neighborhood where police shot dead 13 people in the space of a few hours during a single operation in May.

Lethal force by police has trended up, even as crime rates have decreased across Brazil amid restriction measures for the coronavirus. In April, arrests were down 40 percent in São Paulo. In Rio de Janeiro, indicators for robberies and homicides have fallen drastically during the quarantine.

InSight Crime Analysis

Historically, police brutality in Rio de Janeiro has gained the most international attention. In 2019, the police killed twice as many civilians as the entire US police force, with a New York Times investigation establishing a pattern of Rio officers executing ambushes and firing multiple rounds at fleeing suspects.

Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro and Rio de Janeiro governor Wilson Witzel, who rose to power simultaneously in 2018 on tough-on-crime platforms, have fanned the flames of police violence. They’ve encouraged police to use force liberally against suspected criminals, and Bolsonaro has said that criminals should “die like cockroaches.”

But the governor of São Paulo, João Doria, is a vocal critic of Bolsonaro and police brutality. His state’s more liberal approach to policing had, until last year, kept the number of killings at less than half of those seen in the less-populous state of Rio.

Yet the recent increase of police killings in São Paulo suggests that the rhetoric of leaders can only do so much when police have been given a wide latitude to use lethal force.

SEE ALSO: Coverage of Security Policy

Deadly police raids in Rio de Janeiro’s and São Paulo’s impoverished favelas have compounded the health crisis facing residents, who are already suffering the brunt of the coronavirus pandemic.

Like in most countries, police violence in Brazil disproportionately impacts non-white communities. According to an investigation by O Globo, 78 percent of those killed by Rio de Janeiro police in 2019 were Black or mixed-race.

Brazil’s coronavirus pandemic has seen similar racial disparities. A study of 30,000 Brazilian coronavirus patients established a 38 percent mortality rate for the white patients but a 55 percent mortality rate for Black and mixed-race patients. Most of the country’s deaths have been reported in majority-Black neighborhoods in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

Violent police operations continuing in the favelas as Brazil’s pandemic response falters has even made it difficult for residents to receive what little aid is available to them amid a worsening health crisis. In some instances, police missions have actively impeded residents from receiving food and public health assistance.

share icon icon icon

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

What are your thoughts? Click here to send InSight Crime your comments.

We encourage readers to copy and distribute our work for non-commercial purposes, with attribution to InSight Crime in the byline and links to the original at both the top and bottom of the article. Check the Creative Commons website for more details of how to share our work, and please send us an email if you use an article.

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

Related Content

MONEY LAUNDERING / 4 SEP 2023

Money laundering cases tied to drug trafficking in Uruguay have almost doubled in the past five years, according to a…

BRAZIL / 22 JUN 2023

Latin America's constantly growing prison population has seen tens of thousands of children growing up without their parents, with dire…

BRAZIL / 1 SEP 2023

The dismissal of top security officials in the Brazilian state of Amazonas suggests corruption could complicate Lula’s battle to save…

About InSight Crime

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Contributes Expertise Across the Board 

22 SEP 2023

This week InSight Crime investigators Sara García and María Fernanda Ramírez led a discussion of the challenges posed by Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s “Total Peace” plan within urban contexts. The…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Cited in New Colombia Drug Policy Plan

15 SEP 2023

InSight Crime’s work on emerging coca cultivation in Honduras, Guatemala, and Venezuela was cited in the Colombian government’s…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Discusses Honduran Women's Prison Investigation

8 SEP 2023

Investigators Victoria Dittmar and María Fernanda Ramírez discussed InSight Crime’s recent investigation of a massacre in Honduras’ only women’s prison in a Twitter Spaces event on…

THE ORGANIZATION

Human Trafficking Investigation Published in Leading Mexican Newspaper

1 SEP 2023

Leading Mexican media outlet El Universal featured our most recent investigation, “The Geography of Human Trafficking on the US-Mexico Border,” on the front page of its August 30…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime's Coverage of Ecuador Leads International Debate

25 AUG 2023

This week, Jeremy McDermott, co-director of InSight Crime, was interviewed by La Sexta, a Spanish television channel, about the situation of extreme violence and insecurity in Ecuador…