A third of violent deaths in Rio de Janeiro are the work of the police (for the fourth year)

A member of the special forces of the Rio de Janeiro Military Police, next to the body of a man killed during a police operation in a favela last February. Silvia Izquierdo (AP)

Never in the last three decades has the State of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) recorded a year with fewer murders than 2022, but this positive reality coexists with another much darker and more serious one whose epicenter is the capital and its metropolitan area: the police commit a very high percentage of those deaths.

It is a phenomenon that comes from afar and is increasing.

One of every three violent deaths committed in the last four years in the city of Rio and its periphery was the work of agents of the security forces, according to a study by the Fluminense Federal University released this Friday, on the second anniversary of the police massacre. deadliest in state history.

That day, 27 men, mostly young black men, and a police officer died in the Jacarezinho favela.

The Brazilian police have long been among the most violent in the world, but in a country of continental size like this the average eclipses different realities.

And when it comes to police violence, Rio has always ranked high.

Worse.

Rio de Janeiro and Guanabara Bay make up one of the most spectacular urban landscapes in the world, but behind that façade of beaches, samba and

lies an extremely violent reality.

In the last four years, including the period of lax confinement during the pandemic, 5,958 people were murdered in the city, where more than six million residents live;

of these, more than two thousand (2,043) lost their lives in police operations.

It represents more than a third, and it is something that is repeated in neighboring cities.

Police brutality in its crudest expression, as reflected in the film

It is not new.

In 2013, the best year in the series, uniformed officers paid with public money to protect citizens committed 10% of violent deaths.

The authorities of Rio have been struggling with the Supreme Court for months so that it does not force them to place cameras on the uniforms of their police officers, a measure that in other states, such as São Paulo, has managed to combat the easy trigger and with it a notable drop in the death of suspects and agents.

The prevailing insecurity in many parts of Brazil means that the idea

(the good criminal is the dead criminal) remains deeply rooted, and the defense of human rights is considered synonymous with impunity for criminals.

A speech embraced with enthusiasm by the previous president, Jair Bolsonaro, and it is one of the ingredients of the cocktail that explains his victory in 2018. And it is also one of the reasons why deep-rooted police violence is not part of the public debate except in the most serious cases or when stray bullets from delinquents or agents reach children.

In five years, a hundred minors died in Rio for this reason.

After analyzing the deadliest police operations in Rio in the last 15 years, researchers from the New Illegalities Study Group have come to a chilling conclusion: “If before, most massacres were perpetrated by extermination groups, formed in Most of them are active or reserve police officers, but off-duty. Today, massacres are mainly committed by police officers on duty in operations endorsed by their hierarchical superiors.”

A key ingredient in this significant change, they stress, is the impunity granted to them by the judicial system.

It is rare that any of the police officers involved in these operations is punished.

Of the 28 deaths in Jacarezinho, 24 cases have been archived.

Many neighborhoods of the most touristic city in Brazil and the municipalities that surround it are the scene of the daily battle for control of the territory and of the thousand illegal businesses between drug trafficking gangs and paramilitary organizations of active or retired police officers and soldiers.

In this violent environment, the security forces consolidate themselves as part of the problem and not the solution, the researchers confirm.

Another of the conclusions that come to confirm the seriousness of the problem is that "the police forces commit many more killings and cause many more fatalities than all the armed groups combined."

And that there are a few, with the Comando Vermelho as the most powerful.

The neighborhoods dominated by this criminal group dedicated to the sale of drugs are the scene of the bloodiest operations of the security forces.

Researchers from the Fluminense Federal University also warn about a new phenomenon that contributes to the increase in lethality: they are what they call police mega-massacres, that is, those that cause more than eight fatalities.

The report

highlights that since 2020 there have been seven operations that ended with more than eight deaths when in the previous decade it was one.

And it details that there have been several turning points throughout the period analyzed: deaths at the hands of uniformed officers began to rise when the authorities withdrew an incentive that they gave to the police units that carried out fewer armed confrontations, they increased when the State went bankrupt , increased again when the Army was deployed in the favelas, in 2018, and decreased when, in the midst of a pandemic, the Supreme Court forced to restrict police operations.

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