Document - Brazil: "They come in Shooting": Policing socially excluded communities\r\nFacts and Figures and Case Studies

• By 1998, the richest 20 per cent of the country had a 64.4 per cent share of income or consumption while the poorest 20 per cent had only 2 per cent.
• The homicide rate in Brazil’s urban centres is amongst the highest in the world.
• In 2002 alone, there were almost 50,000 homicides, while hundreds of thousands of people were violently attacked or robbed.
• The murder rate is concentrated in areas of greater socio-economic exclusion and reduced police presence.
• In the city of São Paulo, Jardim Ângela, a socially deprived district in the south of the city, suffered 309 homicides or 123 per 100,000 in 2001, while the middle class district of Moema, only a few kilometres away, suffered 2 homicides or 3 per 100,000 in the same year.
• Private ownership of bullet-proof cars in Brazil is among the highest in the world.

• Official statistics show that between 1999 and 2004, police in the states of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo killed 9,889 people in situations registered officially as “resistance followed by death”.
• As a result of this, 558 police officers in Rio de Janeiro were punished. 14 of them were expelled from the police.
• Police officers are also at high risk of attacks. In Rio de Janeiro, 52 police officers were killed on duty in 2004 alone.

• The majority of the victims of police violence are poor, black or mixed race youths many without any criminal record.
• According to UNESCO, 93 per cent of all homicide victims in Brazil in 2000 were male. Youths aged 15 to 24 are 30 times more likely to be victims of homicide. Black youths suffer double the number of homicides. Of the 17,900 youths who were victims of homicides in 2002, 11,308 were black while 6,592 were white.

• There are around 17 million small arms held in Brazil of which 15 million are held privately. Of those around 9 million are held illegally; 4 million are believed to be held by criminals.
• In Rio de Janeiro police confiscated 3,891 revolvers between 1960 and 1969. This increased to 53,526 between 1990 and 2001.
• While the majority of guns seized are revolvers and pistols, there has been a marked rise in the number of high-velocity weapons, including assault rifles, machine guns and sub-machine guns.
• Police have also found grenades, mortars, bazookas and land mines in the hands of drug factions, some believed to have been stolen or illegally obtained from the military.
• Brazil is the largest manufacturer and exporter of small arms in the region. Around three-quarters of the weapons apprehended by the police are made in Brazil.
• A recent statement by the head of Rio de Janeiro’s police intelligence unit claimed that 80% of arms in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro are coming from Paraguay, where controls on the sales of guns are much more relaxed. This includes firearms manufactured in Brazil which are exported to Paraguay and then illegally smuggled back into the country.
• In July 2004, the government launched a disarmament campaign. By June 2005, 356,139 guns had been collected across the country and destroyed.

• In May 2005, a survey by the Universidade Federal Fluminense found that 30 per cent of the population partially or fully accepted the concept that “a good criminal is a dead criminal”.
• In April 2005, Marcelo Itagiba, State Secretary of Public Security of Rio de Janeiro said that “if the police are more active they will kill more people”.

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