RIO DE JANEIRO, May 7 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Brazilian police shot dead eight people in one of Rio de Janeiro’s biggest slums on Monday, an official said, just days after figures showed a record number of killings by state officers in the first quarter.
“We confirm that eight suspects were killed in an operation in Mare,” a police spokesman said.
Images on social media purportedly showed children fleeing the area where the shooting was happening.
No other details about the operation in Mare – a poor, densely populated swathe of the city encompassing various favelas in large part run by heavily-armed drug traffickers – were immediately available.
Local media said police had been seeking to arrest a major drug trafficker.
Slain black rights activist Marielle Franco, whose assassination last year shocked Brazil and prompted major street demonstrations, was from Mare.
The city council member was shot dead in the centre of Rio in what appeared to be a professional hit.
Monday’s police operation comes after the state Institute for Public Safety released figures on Friday showing 434 people were killed during “police intervention” in the first three months – a 17.9 per cent increase as compared with the same period in 2018.
That is the highest quarterly figure since record keeping of police-related killings began in 1998.
But the total number of homicides in Rio state, including those committed by police, fell by 18 per cent compared to the first three months of last year.
The number went from 1,868 down to 1,528, but the latter is still very high, with an average of 17 people killed each day.
In late March, state Governor Wilson Witzel told O Globo newspaper that police were now using snipers to take out suspects from long distances.
“The order is clear: if someone is carrying an assault rifle, they have to be neutralised in lethal fashion immediately,” Witzel said.
The start of his term has been marked by several major police shootings.
In January, 13 people were shot and killed during a police raid in a slum near downtown Rio, nine of them in the same house.
Justice and Public Safety Minister Sergio Moro recently submitted to congress a bill that among other things would broaden the list of circumstances under which police are allowed to shoot in self-defense.
If the law passes, police will avoid prosecution if they open fire “out of fear, surprise or violent emotion.” — NNN-AGENCIES
