Brazilian police killed more than 11,000
people between 2009 and 2013 for an average of six killings a day, a
public safety NGO said Tuesday.
The study by the Sao Paulo-based Brazilian
Forum on Public Safety said police nationwide killed 11,197 people
over the past five years, while law enforcement agents in the United
States killed 11,090 people over the past 30 years.
"The empirical evidence shows that
Brazilian police make abusive use of lethal force to respond to
crime and violence," the report said.
There were 416 people killed last year in
Rio de Janeiro state, giving it the highest per-capita rate for
2013.
The study also said 50,806 people were
killed in all homicides last year, about one person every 10
minutes.
Nearly 70 percent of the homicide victims
were black and more than half were ages 15 to 29, it said.
In addition to using excessive force,
Brazilian police frequently execute suspects, said Bruno Paes Manso
of the University of Sao Paulo's Center for the Study on Violence.
He called it "a practice rarely investigated."
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