A government study concluded that death squads operated...

A government study concluded that death squads operated in 15 of Brazil's 26 states. In Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest city, 435 civilians were killed by police in the first five months of 2003, a 51 percent increase over the same period in 2002, according to statistics compiled by Global Justice, an independent Brazilian human rights group. Nine hundred civilians in Rio de Janeiro had been killed by police in 2003, according to statistics from human rights organizations. A total of 427 civilians were killed by police in Rio in 1999 and 592 in 2001, said Amnesty International and the Global Justice center, quoting police statistics. The police classified those killings as "acts of resistance." "This is Brazil's shame," said Luiz Eduardo Soares, the national secretary of public security. "We will not produce a modern state in Brazil until we can deal with the problem of summary executions and vigilante justice by our police." A statistical analysis of forensic reports on police killings by Global Justice and Amnesty International indicated that 40 percent of people slain by police in 2002 were shot at close range, 61 percent received at least one shot in the head and for every civilian wounded in confrontations with police, three were killed. A third of all people killed by police showed signs of having been beaten. "These are executions," said Rubem Cesar Fernandes, director of Viva Rio, a non-profit organization that against guns and violence. "These numbers cannot be explained by running gun battles between drug dealers and police and the police come out on top. These numbers can only be explained by torture and summary executions by the police."