The slaughter subsided under a program that reassigned officers involved in shootings, but in recent years the numbers have started to rise again. Last year, according to the Folha , the police killed 498 people. This year, during the first quarter alone, they killed 248. In the city of Rio de Janeiro, police killed 430 citizens in 1998, twice as many as they did the previous year, according to sociologist Ignacio Cano of the Rio-based Institute for Religious Studies. The figure rivals the annual number of homicides by all U.S. police forces combined.
Police everywhere tend to prey on poor towns and neighborhoods.
In Rio, police homicides in the late 1990s were six times higher in slums than elsewhere, according to Cano. Victims include unionists, social activists and people with few resources to defend themselves, such as children, beggars, prostitutes, transvestites and drug users. Police in Latin America often claim their victims have died in shoot-outs. But investigations tend to turn up evidence that the fatal bullets were shot at point-blank range and that guns were planted on the victims, according to Human Rights Watch. A U.S. State Department report says Rio police usually immobilize victims before killing them.