Brazil police 'kill 11,000 in six years'

Police in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo have killed more than 11,000 people in the past six years, many in execution-style murders, according to a report released by Human Rights Watch.

Few of the officers have been charged in the extrajudicial killings, which are often labelled in police reports as the deaths of suspects who resisted arrest, the report said.

The 122-page declaration echoes a 2008 United Nations' finding that police throughout Brazil were responsible for a "significant portion" of 48,000 slayings the year before.

"Extrajudicial killing of criminal suspects is not the answer to violent crime," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. "The residents of Rio and Sao Paulo need more effective policing, not more violence from the police."

Isabel Figueiredo, Brazil's coordinator-general of human rights and public safety, acknowledged that police violence is a widespread problem and "it concerns the federal government a great deal."

Ms Figueiredo said authorities have launched a series of initiatives to confront the problem, including training police to respect human rights and the appropriate use of force, in addition to the purchase of less-lethal weapons for state police forces.

Security forces "have begun to understand that instead of solving the problem, confronting criminals with weapons leads to casualties on both sides," she said.

Officials from the Rio and Sao Paulo police departments did not comment.

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