Number of shootings per month in Rio de Janeiro 2021-2024

In 2022, there were a total of 2,962 shootings registered in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. March was the month with the most shootings in each of the given years - in 2023, there were 383 occurrences, or about 13 percent of the year's total. The lowest number of shootings in the given period occurred in August 2023, when 155 cases were recorded.

Police violence in Rio

In 2022, the Supreme Court ordered the state government of Rio de Janeiro to come up with a plan to reduce police lethality, as the level of violence in police actions was deemed unacceptable, due to high numbers of casualties and human rights violations. The number of civilians killed as a result of police intervention more than quadrupled between 2013 and 2019, reaching a record number of 1,814 that year. Despite the decrease in comparison to 2019, every year from 2020 to 2022 saw more than 1,200 civilians being killed. Furthermore, it is deemed that there is structural racism in the actions of security forces. For instance, three-quarters of the deaths caused by police interventions in the state during 2022 were of people of color.

Shootings and massacres in Rio

Civil society and public institutions have made proposals to alleviate this situation. One of them is the ADPF 635 (Allegation of Violation of a Fundamental Precept), also known as ADPF Favelas Case, presented by the Brazilian Socialist Party, and whose preliminary approval took place in June 2020. The measure restricted unplanned police operations in the favelas during the pandemic. Despite its frequent violations, it showed evident results. Shootings fell from 7,368 in 2019 to less than 3,000 in 2023. Almost a third of documented shootings in 2023 were due to police operations, while 393 were motivated by murder or attempted murder, the second most common reason. In March 2022, Rio de Janeiro's government published a plan to reduce deaths during police intervention. In that year, the state of Rio de Janeiro registered 1,065 fewer deaths than the previous year. However, almost 1,000 people lost their lives in 2022 and 2023- although this figure is lower than 2021, it is still higher than the number recorded during the pandemic period when restrictions were imposed as 2020 saw this figure fall below 900. It is still considerably lower than the 1,522 deceased due to shootings in 2019.