São Paulo has recorded 118 deaths in 2015 due to alleged confrontations with the police.

Elaine Patricia Cruz - Reporter for Agência Brasil

Between January and March 9 of this year, 118 people died in alleged confrontations with military and civilian police throughout the state of São Paulo. This data was released by the São Paulo State Police Ombudsman. According to the Ombudsman, many of these incidents show signs of execution.

"There are an average of two deaths per day. That's an extremely high number," said the police ombudsman, Julio Cesar Fernandes Neves. "This truly demonstrates that the lethality rate in our country is something out of the ordinary. This doesn't happen in any other country in the world, only in Brazil."

According to the ombudsman, one of the reasons that leads to the increase in the number of police lethalities is impunity. Another factor is the culture of the Military Police itself: "the culture of the Military Police, which has existed since its formation, is as if it were a war between the PM and the criminals and this encourages lethality," he said in an interview today (19) with Agência Brasil.

The Rondas Ostensivas Tobias de Aguiar (Rota), a special group of the São Paulo Military Police, is responsible for 12 of these deaths. "Rota was the one that killed the most," said the ombudsman.

Throughout last year, according to the ombudsman's office, there were 801 deaths in alleged confrontations in the state, almost double the number in 2013, when 440 deaths were recorded. According to Fernandes, this year's number is "worrying" and shows that the deaths are occurring in an "escalating" manner, that is, they are increasing throughout the state. "They have been increasing at an escalating rate, without stopping. This is worrying and causes fear in the civil society of São Paulo."

According to him, this week the Public Security Secretariat is expected to release a resolution that aims to reduce police lethality. Through this resolution, whenever a death occurs caused by a police officer, the crime scene must be preserved until the arrival of a member of the police internal affairs department [Civil or Military], a public prosecutor, and also a public defender.

"Everything needs to be tried. Two years ago, a resolution was put in place stating that, at the crime scene, only SAMU [Mobile Emergency Care Service] personnel could assist [a victim], and no longer the Military Police. Immediately, at that time, there was a reduction in lethality, but then it returned to normal. Regarding this new resolution: we know that this alone will not drastically reduce lethality, nor eliminate it, but everything must be done," said the ombudsman.

According to him, another measure adopted that had little effect was the removal of the term "resistance followed by death" from police reports. The term was removed from the incident report and replaced with "death by police intervention," which, in the end, is the same thing. "This does not mean that it will reduce lethality. What needs to happen is less confrontation," said Fernandes.

According to the ombudsman, the Military Police Command claims that there are many deaths in confrontations because criminals are better armed and bolder. "This means, according to the command, that they [criminals] are using more sophisticated weapons and engaging in confrontations with the police. We believe that this could be avoided, recalling even the Giraldi method [a method created by Nilson Giraldi and adopted by the São Paulo police], which is to shoot only as a last resort, in self-defense and in extreme necessity."

According to the ombudsman, police lethality could decrease if community policing units were established throughout the state. "It's a police force similar to the one in Japan, which is friendly to the citizen, and vice versa. Society sees community policing as a support, not an enemy."

Contacted by Agência Brasil, the Public Security Secretariat has not yet commented on the report prepared by the Ombudsman's Office.