Brazil should urgently address the chronic problem of police abuse and impunity by ensuring that prosecutors lead investigations and that those investigations comply with international standards, Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to the attorney general, Augusto Aras.
Police killed more than 6,400 people in 2022, according to the nonprofit Brazilian Forum of Public Security, which compiles the data from official sources at the state level. In less than a month between the end of July and August 2023, at least 62 people were killed during police operations in Bahia, Rio, and São Paulo states alone.
While some police killings are in self defense, many result from illegal use of force that goes largely unpunished. Currently, civil police carry out investigations into police abuses. This raises serious questions of impartiality as civil police investigate their own personnel, as well as military police personnel with whom they may have worked in other cases.
In 2017, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered Brazil to ensure that investigations of police killings, torture, or sexual violence are “entrusted to an independent body, distinct from the police force involved in the incident.” In 2021, the Court said that both the Brazilian state and representatives of victims agreed that the prosecutor’s office is that independent body. Brazil has an obligation to comply with the Court’s decisions.
On March 10, the National Council of Prosecutors, which oversees the work of federal and state prosecutors, established a working group to draft a resolution to guide prosecutors’ investigations into cases of death, torture, and sexual violence “in the context of police operations.” The resolution should make clear that prosecutors have not only authority, but the obligation to conduct their own investigations into all cases of police abuse, Human Rights Watch said.
Human Rights Watch has documented scores of cases in which police officers intimidated witnesses, or manipulated and destroyed evidence, including by taking bodies to hospitals falsely claiming the victims were still alive and removing the victim’s clothes; as well as cases in which civil police failed to conduct adequate investigations into police killings, for instance by not visiting the crime scene.
The new resolution should include robust requirements for conducting the investigations, Human Rights Watch said. Prosecutors have often failed to meet their obligation to ensure civil and military police abide by the law and that investigations into abuses are prompt, thorough, and independent.
“Prosecutors have a key role to play in breaking a cycle of violence and impunity by ensuring adequate police oversight and independent investigations into abuses,” Canineu said. “For that to happen, whoever is appointed as attorney general should not only promote the adoption of a strong resolution, but ensure that state attorneys general and state prosecutors implement it.”