Report on Brazil dictatorship urges police reform
Report on Brazil dictatorship urges police reform
By JENNY BARCHFIELD, Associated Press | December 11, 2014 | Updated: December 11, 2014 12:24pm
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — The National Truth Commission that probed human rights abuses committed by Brazil's former military dictatorship drew a direct link from regime-era kidnappings and killings to the brutality of today's police force.
Brazil's police are among world's deadliest, with officers often implicated in everything from extortion and kidnappings, to torture and summary executions.
Between 2009 and 2013, police killed 11,197 people in Brazil, according to a study released last month by the violence watchdog group Brazilian Public Security Forum — roughly the same amount of people killed by U.S. police in the past three decades.
In an exhaustive report capping a nearly three-year-long investigation into the 1964-85 dictatorship, the truth commission said the abuses committed then by government agents "are not foreign to the reality of contemporary Brazil" and blamed impunity for regime figures for today's police brutality.
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http://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Report-on-Brazil-dictatorship-urges-police-reform-5950201.php