Behind the postcard depicting a carnival that is already warming up, the most famous beaches in Brazil, the Bossa Nova or a centuries-old hotel like the Copacabana Palace, in Rio de Janeiro lies a state in which every day last year more than 11 people died in a violent manner, murders concentrated in the metropolitan areas of the spectacular city. According to the Public Security Institute, the 4,356 deaths in 2023 are the lowest number in 34 years, when state authorities began counting. Even more strikingly, the decline in violent deaths overall (-5%) is a result of the fact that as police kill less (-35%), they have relaxed their easy trigger. That means 869 people died in police operations, more than two per day and almost 500 fewer than the previous year.
Brazil's security forces are among the deadliest in the world. And among them, those from Bahia stand out for their lightness, having snatched the unfortunate first place from Rio de Janeiro. Rio's annual report, prepared by the Institute of Public Safety and presented last Friday, amazes public safety scholars. “This decline is surprising considering that no policy was implemented at the initiative of the state government [de Río de Janeiro] The aim was to reduce the lethality of the police,” says Carolina Grillo of Fluminense Federal University, who recalls that the baseline “was very high, in 2022 there were 1,330 deaths.”
Grillo, coordinator of the New Illegalisms Study Group, warns against the temptation to congratulate oneself over the number of casualties at the hands of uniformed officers: “Even with a 34.7% decline, police lethality remains at an unacceptable level, it is more than . “twice as much as in 2012 and 2013”. It emphasizes that a much larger decline would be necessary to reach an internationally acceptable level, i.e. that security forces cause less than 10% of violent deaths. Currently, police in Rio, a state of 16 million people, commit 20% of homicides. It reached 30% in the last four years, a period that covers almost the entire term of former President Jair Bolsonaro.
When the NGO Human Rights Watch recently presented its annual report, police lethality was one of the concerns that NGO highlighted most in the chapter dedicated to Brazil. The head of the Brazilian office, César Muñoz, criticized “the lack of violent measures to combat the problem of excessive use of force by security forces.” And he warned that police deaths increased in 16 of the 27 states in 2023 and that in two of them (the sparsely populated Goiás and Amapá), police caused half of the violent deaths.
Another specialist, Joana Monteiro from the Getulio Vargas Foundation, reported a monthly average of 93 in the first semester and a monthly average of 111 in 2022. “I don't know what happened, the one who can explain it is the PMERJ,” the Rio State Military Police.
The Rio Institute of Public Security highlights in its report that confiscations of long guns increased by almost 30% (610 rifles), more than 6,000 handguns were confiscated, almost 15,000 stolen vehicles were recovered and almost 37,000 were arrested in flagrante delicto. And it highlights the investment of 2.5 billion reais ($510 million, 470 million euros) in technology, protective equipment for agents and work in barracks and police stations.
The expansion of cameras mounted on police uniforms is one of the factors that has helped reduce police killing rates in Brazil in recent years, but their use is very inconsistent. And it is also at the center of the polarized political debate. The governors of Rio and São Paulo, who are close to former President Bolsonaro and know that the security forces are one of their main sources of votes, are reluctant to adopt this method.
Expert Grillo recalls that “in recent years, the Rio state government has resisted all the decisions of the Supreme Court aimed at reducing the lethality of the police, both with resources and through deliberate disobedience.” Groups of relatives of the Victims and other social movements went to the Supreme Court in 2019. And the Supreme Court ordered cameras to be installed on all Rio agents in 2022. But only now, on January 8, the most emblematic battalion of the military police, the BOPE, which starred in the famous film Tropa de Elite, began to use the equipment of discord. Grillo also explains: “What has changed in 2023 with the inauguration of President Lula.” [da Silva] According to the government, Rio de Janeiro no longer has the political support to continue challenging the Supreme Court.”
Proclaiming from the rooftops that “a good bandit is a dead bandit,” as some political leaders did during Bolsonaro’s time, no longer has political support from the top of power. “If the authorities have previously expressed unabashed support for police killings, the certainty of impunity is at some risk,” adds the coordinator of the New Illegalisms Study Group.
Experiences in other Brazilian states show that cameras in uniforms reduce the deaths of suspects and also those of agents.
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