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Human rights activists have voiced outrage after Rio de Janeiro’s parliament approved plans to pay police officers a “wild west bonus” for “neutralizing criminals” during operations.
The move is a throwback to the mid-1990s when Rio’s then governor, Marcello Alencar, introduced similar legislation that caused an explosion of extrajudicial killings in the city’s favelas.
That law was scrapped in 1998, after three years of bloodshed, but on Tuesday lawmakers voted by 47 votes to 15 to revive the policy as part of new legislation relating to Rio’s civil police. Under the rule, civil police officers would be paid bonuses of between 10% and 150% of their salaries for capturing high-calibre weapons and “neutralizing criminals”.
The move’s supporters – many of them allies of Brazil’s former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro – argue that an iron fist was the only way to defeat the heavily armed drug factions who rule many of the city’s favelas.
Alexandre Knoploch, a lawmaker from Bolsonaro’s Liberal party, compared the policy to the anti-crime crackdown unfolding in El Salvador under its authoritarian president, Nayib Bukele, where a controversial three-year state of emergency has seen the murder rate plummet.
“There is no country in the world which has managed to bring down its high levels of criminality without taking stances such as this,” Knoploch told Rio’s legislative assembly on Tuesday, hailing the law as a way of fighting criminals he called “scum”.
“I’m sorry but if these people can’t understand the meaning of civility, they must be neutralized by the police. If you’re carrying a rifle, you have to be neutralized,” Knoploch declared.
But activists and security experts poured scorn on the plans which must now be green lit or vetoed by Rio’s rightwing governor Cláudio Castro, another Bolsonaro ally.
“This bonus encourages extrajudicial killings. It is a perverse stimulus to state violence – an invitation to slaughter,” said Antônio Carlos Costa, the founder of anti-violence group Rio de Paz.
Henrique Vieira, a federal congressman for Rio, described the legislation as “stupid, bizarre, inhumane, cruel, expensive and inefficient”.
Renata Souza, a state congresswoman, said the law would give police “a carte blanche to apply the death penalty in the favelas”.
Marcelo Freixo, a veteran human rights activist and leftwing politician, warned the law would disproportionately affect young Black men from the favelas. “Police deserve to be paid more – but not for killing people,” he said.
Legal experts told the Rio newspaper Extra the “neutralization” policy was unconstitutional in a country which did not allow the death penalty.
Carlos Minc, a state congressman who helped abolish the “wild west” law in the 90s, recalled how research had found that 64% of the 1,200 people killed “in combat” during that period died from shots to their backs, ears and to the back of their necks. “They were executions,” he told reporters, calling the resurrected law a step backwards into a violent past.
In 2021, Rio’s civil police was blamed for the worst day of violence in the city’s history when 28 people were shot dead during an operation in a favela considered one of the main strongholds of the Red Command faction.
