Brazilian police kill six people a day, says report

Brazilian police killed more than 11,000 people between 2009 and 2013 – an average of six killings a day, the Guardian reports, citing a study.

The study by the Sao Paulo-based non-governmental organisation the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety says police killed 11,197 people over the past five years, while law enforcement agents in the US were responsible for the deaths of 11,090 people over the past 30 years.

“The empirical evidence shows that Brazilian police make abusive use of lethal force to respond to crime and violence,” the report says.

There were 416 people killed last year in Rio de Janeiro state. The study also says 50,806 people were killed in all homicides last year, about one person every 10 minutes.

Nearly 70% of the homicide victims were black and more than half were aged 15 to 29, it said.