Murder

Brazil cop shoots teens at close range after motorcycle chase

VICE News

SÃO PAULO — São Paulo military police have arrested an officer who was caught on camera this week firing at two teenage suspects who had fallen to the ground from a stolen motorcycle following a dangerous pursuit through the streets of Brazil’s biggest city.

It was meant to be a week when police in São Paulo State celebrated new figures that showed the lowest number of homicides on record, but the shocking end to a police chase in the south of São Paulo city — caught live from TV helicopters — quickly put paid to that.

Footage from the chase, which was broadcast live on the channels TV Bandeirantes and Record, shows a military police officer firing at and wounding the two teenagers, aged 16 and 17, at near-point-blank range after the pursuit ends abruptly.

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Despite firearm restrictions, guns kill 5 people every hour in Brazil

VICE News

SÃO PAULO — Firearms are responsible for 116 deaths every day in Brazil, according to a new study — a rate of nearly five people every hour.

The Map of Violence 2015, which UNESCO published this week in partnership with the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences and the Brazilian government, calculated that gun violence ended a staggering 42,416 lives in 2012 alone, the most recent year with comprehensive data.

The national mortality rate of 21.9 gun-related fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants — of which nearly 95 percent are homicides, while the balance includes suicides, accidents, and unexplained cases — is the second highest ever recorded in the annual study’s 35-year history.

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Brazil’s overcrowded, mismanaged prisons are at breaking point

VICE News

SÃO PAULO — Brazil’s hideously overcrowded prisons see frequent outbursts of extreme violence and murders, and are infamous for being in the stranglehold of sophisticated criminal gangs that are capable of orchestrating anything from synchronized mutinies to contract killings from inside their cells.

The country’s prison population is so vast and the authorities’ ability to contain it so stretched, the lack of security at some penitentiaries is almost surreal.

This week it emerged that inmates at a jail in Piauí, one of Brazil’s most impoverished states, are regularly slipping out to go on late-night crime sprees, robbing locals of a wish list of items banned in prison.

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Brazil police arrest ‘quiet’ 26-year-old mass murder suspect

Mashable

SÃO PAULO — Police in Brazil have arrested a man they say has confessed to killing at least 39 people in a four-year killing spree in the central-western state of Goiás.

Tiago Henrique Gomes da Rocha, a 26-year-old security guard at a hospital, was arrested on Tuesday in the state capital city, Goiânia, and has, according to police, confessed to at least 39 murders which targeted women, sex workers, gay people and homeless people.

Local police chief Deusny Aparecido, who headed a task force investigating at least 15 murders over the past two months, described the suspected serial killer as a “cold” person.

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Homophobic murder prompts call for nationwide protests

SÃO PAULO — The body of 18-year-old João Antônio Donati was found on Wednesday on wasteland in Inhumas, a town near the Brazilian city of Goiânia, Goiás state.

According to his family, Donati – who was openly gay – had gone out on Tuesday evening to a bar with friends and never returned home.

Less than a day later, he was found dead with a badly beaten face, and plastic and paper stuffed in his mouth, which caused his death by asphyxia, according to an initial autopsy.

Local police say they are not ruling out homophobia as the cause of the murder, but denied rumours that the teenager’s body was found with a note with a homophobic message.

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Brazil police identify suspects after woman lynched

Anadolu Agency

GUARUJÁ, SÃO PAULO STATE – Police in the Brazilian city of Guarujá, in São Paulo state, have arrested a man and are searching for further suspects after a woman died after being beaten by locals as a result of rumours posted online.

The woman, Fabiane Maria de Jesus, 33, was attacked by a group of people on Saturday in the coastal city after being mistaken for a suspected kidnapper rumoured to use children in black magic rituals, whose photo appeared on a community page on Facebook.

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Rio violence forces early World Cup police boost

Anadolu Agency

RIO DE JANEIRO – Security arrangements planned for this year’s World Cup, which set out to boost the number of military police patrolling the streets of Rio de Janeiro, have been implemented ahead of schedule, as levels of violence in the city continue to rise.

Some 2,000 military police will patrol the city’s streets from Monday, Rio’s Secretary of Public Security told the Anadolu Agency, but declined to elaborate as to where police efforts would be focused.

A spokesperson for Rio’s military police also told AA that an additional 490 officers would complete training this Friday and would join the 2,000-strong contingent on patrolling duties.

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