“I’m a hero to my people,” one militia leader said.BELÉM, Brazil — The masked gunmen pulled up to Wanda’s Bar at 3:49 p.m. on May 19 and began firing the moment they left their vehicles. The militias took his death personally, three members said, and decided to respond.On the night of Nov. 4, 2014, they retaliated, killing at least 10 people. His hatred of criminals justified just about anything, even killing innocent civilians accidentally. India: Asia 1,731 125 1606 1,380,000,000 12.54 2019 "Other" lists killings while in judicial custody.Official numbers are considerably lower. News > World > Americas Brazil breaks own record for number of murders in single year as deaths hit 63,880. Police killed close to six people a day, a 43 percent increase from the same month last year.
“I knew he was innocent and I knew things were getting out of control.
By one count, 54 people were killed by officers between 2005 and 2015, about five a year; and between six and 13 officers have died in the line of duty each year in 2008-15. They all knew the militias, or were even friends with them. Of the seven people charged with the crime, four were off-duty police officers — including the three suspected gunmen.“We’ve discovered a cancer inside the police,” said Armando Brasil, one of the prosecutors. He said he watched as a fellow officer dismounted, raised his weapon and fired at a teenager in a baseball cap.The teenager, Eduardo Chaves, 16, was the first person gunned down in the massacre that night. “I don’t know whether the gunshot wound killed him or the fall,” said his mother, Marlene Silva de Oliveira, folded in grief. To them, violence was the only solution, and the only question was how to wield it.“There’s a way to fix this,” said one of the militia leaders. The death of Douglas Rafael da Silva Pereira triggered clashes in his neighbourhood Over the course of a week, The New York Times tracked seven police shootings in Belém, with nine casualties. and exchanged gunfire with the police as they tried to escape. When it stopped, one of the men was taken into custody, witnesses said, adding that he appeared injured but could walk.An hour later, when he arrived at the hospital, he was dead, with a gunshot wound to the heart, a photo of the body showed.“I don’t know whether they executed him, and I don’t want to know,” his sister said on condition of anonymity, fearful of reprisals from the police. More than 800 people were killed by the police … “And the militias thrive off this feeling.”But extrajudicial killings are often much more than an extreme step by overzealous officers in cities like Belém and Rio de Janeiro, and some militia members are candid about their criminal motivations.To line their pockets, some militia members say they bill businesses for security services, taking in hefty sums with mafia-style promises to keep the peace, or they charge local residents for the right to engage in basic commerce, like selling cooking gas or pizzas.The militias also extort criminals and kill those who don’t pay, operations that hardly differ from the ones they are supposedly confronting.“It became explicit for me,” said a third militia member.
The FBI has released its latest statistics regarding line-of-duty deaths and/or assaults on law enforcement officers in the United States.
In other words, for every policeman killed in El Salvador, nearly 102 suspected criminals die — 10 times the level researchers consider suspiciously high.In Brazil, the number is also striking: 57 suspected criminals die for every police officer killed, the analysts found.“We believe that homicides are not a problem, they’re a solution,” said Bruno Paes Manso, a researcher at the University of São Paulo, describing the public acceptance of killings by the police.
They were responsible for 35 percent of all killings in Rio de Janeiro state in April. Robbing, extorting and killing without compunction.Yet they did not belong to one of the many gangs that traffic drugs or guns in Brazil, leaving a trail of corpses.The killings drew national attention to the police militias that have long plagued Belém, a dilapidated port city on the Amazon River.