Image: Brazilian protests by Tânia Rêgo is licensed under CC-BY 3.0 BR.
Police Brutality in Brazil
Stories of Police Brutality and Torture
Sir Nigel Rodley
One story of police brutality in Brazil is the story of Sir Nigel Rodley. He was a young boy at the time of torture. In prison he was beaten with boards for over an hour and then thrown into the deep end of a pool and left to drown. He managed to swim to the shallow end of the pool where he was driven back to the deep end three times before he was allowed to go back to his cell.
Anonymous Man
Another story of police brutality in Brazil happened in Rio de Janeiro, where the police alternated between beating a man on the head and neck and submerging his head in water for long periods of time. The police did this for at least six hours.
1992 São Paulo City Prison Massacre
In late 1992, an elite unit of the São Paulo State Militarized Police (Polícia Militar) stormed Carandiru Prison and gunned down 111 inmates, even though most of them were already subdued and on their knees.
July 1993 Massacre
Late one night in July 1993, nine off-duty Rio de Janeiro police officers and their vigilante helpers fired from the safety of their cars into a sleeping crowd of seventy two street-children who were sleeping as they did every night in front of Rio's Candelária Cathedral.
Sir Nigel Rodley
One story of police brutality in Brazil is the story of Sir Nigel Rodley. He was a young boy at the time of torture. In prison he was beaten with boards for over an hour and then thrown into the deep end of a pool and left to drown. He managed to swim to the shallow end of the pool where he was driven back to the deep end three times before he was allowed to go back to his cell.
Anonymous Man
Another story of police brutality in Brazil happened in Rio de Janeiro, where the police alternated between beating a man on the head and neck and submerging his head in water for long periods of time. The police did this for at least six hours.
1992 São Paulo City Prison Massacre
In late 1992, an elite unit of the São Paulo State Militarized Police (Polícia Militar) stormed Carandiru Prison and gunned down 111 inmates, even though most of them were already subdued and on their knees.
July 1993 Massacre
Late one night in July 1993, nine off-duty Rio de Janeiro police officers and their vigilante helpers fired from the safety of their cars into a sleeping crowd of seventy two street-children who were sleeping as they did every night in front of Rio's Candelária Cathedral.
Black People constitute 56 percent of Brazilians but are 79 percent of those killed by police.
Black People make up 67 percent of the prison population in Brazil.
Mass Incarceration in Brazil
Brazil is currently the country with the 3rd largest prison population in the world with approximately 750,000 inmates. And roughly two fifths of this population are awaiting trial. The number of people behind bars in Brazil increased 575 percent between 1990 and 2014. This may have had something to do with the launch of the War on Drugs and the expansion of police. The civil police grew from 64,471 officers in 2004 to 117,642 in 2014, while the federal police grew from 7,092 to 13,626 officers between 2000 and 2014. This expansion and rise in arrests doesn't mean good prison conditions however. Many prisons in Brazil are underfunded, overcrowded, and lack decent living conditions. An average of 1,550 people die each year in Brazil's prisons.
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