Share on Facebook366Tweet about this on Twitter190Share on Reddit0Share on Google+0

Sao Paulo – On Thursday, September 18th, an officer of the PM (Polícia Militar) executed a street vendor named Carlos Augusto Muniz Braga in broad daylight as he reached to grab a pepper spray canister that was pointed at his face – the incident was caught on camera (1:10):

Cláudia Silva Lopes, wife of Carlos says this isn’t nearly the first time her or her husband have been harassed and brutalized by the police. She says they even beat her while she was pregnant during a previous incident.

“Why does the government deploy police who are unprepared to deal with people? And now how will I sustain my three children?” Said Claudia, who has children aged 4, 9 and 12 years. She said that was not allowed to see her husband’s body.

Carlos was not working at the time, but he stopped to help when he saw three police officers harassing another street vendor as he was on the way to pick up one of his kids from school.

Street vendors are routinely harassed by police, but this incident is a result of a coordinated crack down on “illegal markets.”

The police officer has been arrested, and the mayor of Sao Paulo Fernando Haddad [from PT (Workers Party)]said this was just an isolated case. Of course we know this isn’t true – Brazilian police kill more suspected criminals than any other nation in the world, one in every 229 arrestees. Compare that to the United States which has its own epidemic of police violence, where only one out of 31,575 arrestees are murdered. During the year of 2008, Brazilian police murdered 1,137 people compared to 371 in the US.

This is just what’s been recorded on paper, at least 15 people go missing each day in Rio de Janeiro alone. In 2013 at least 5000 people went missing on record, and the blame is widely placed on police.

Share on Facebook366Tweet about this on Twitter190Share on Reddit0Share on Google+0