A black man is killed by the police every four hours, according to a survey

In at least six Brazilian states, a black person is killed in police actions every four hours. This is what the study by the Security Observatory Network, entitled ‘Target skin: the color of police violence’, which was released this Tuesday (14), with data obtained via the Access to Information Law, points out.

The survey details the situation in each region of Brazil. There were 2,653 deaths caused by the police, 82.7% of which were black people.

Among the states in the country, Rio de Janeiro is the one with the most homicides of black people, in absolute numbers, during police actions, with 939 records among the 1092 dead who had their color informed. São Paulo, the most populous state in the country, has the second highest number of murders of black people.

The state of Bahia, in turn, in addition to being the third with the highest number of murders of blacks by police officers, in absolute numbers, appears as the region in Brazil with the highest percentage of black people killed in police actions, with 98%.

The city in which the most black people die in police actions in Brazil is in the state of Bahia, Santo Antônio de Jesus, according to data from the Brazilian Public Security Forum.

“This reflects a persistent and deep inequality in the Brazilian social structure, in which blacks are systematically killed more often than whites. This goes back to slavery, it is not today that this pattern is repeated. And if nothing is done, we will keep this statistic”, emphasizes the political scientist and doctor of law, Geraldo Tadeu.

The states of Ceará, Piauí and Pernambuco complete the list of federation units where security agents kill a black person every four hours. In Ceará, black people are seven times more likely to be murdered than people of white people.

In Piauí, 91% of victims of lethal police violence in the state are black. Finally, in Pernambuco, deaths due to police intervention more than doubled (53%) throughout the state and the proportion of blacks killed in these actions also increased, reaching 97%.