Minorities fear police in Brazil, where being black ‘invites being shot’
João Pedro Matos Pinto was playing video games with his cousin when bullets ruptured the air.
“There was a police helicopter circling, and so many shots — now we know it was more than 70,” said his father, Neilton da Costa Pinto. “João Pedro messaged me. He was terrified. Then I stopped receiving messages.”
Pinto ran to find his 14-year-old son, but was met by a swarm of heavily armed and tight-lipped officers. “I was desperate, I couldn’t find him. They wouldn’t tell me anything. My nephew was crying, saying João Pedro had been shot,” said Pinto, 45. João Pedro had been struck by a bullet fired by a police officer; his father would not find his body until the next day.
The boy’s death in 2020 would go on to prompt protests in Brazil akin to those by the Black Lives Matter movement in the US; ordinary people angered by police killings that run into the thousands every year. Painted on the walls of favelas are the murals of other victims, such as the ten-year-old Eduardo de Jesus Ferreira, shot on the doorstep of his home, and 24-year-old Kathlen Romeu, who was 13 weeks pregnant when she was killed by a stray bullet.
Last year, 6,381 people in Brazil died due to police action, many as a result of the illegal use of force, according to Human Rights Watch. It is one of the highest figures in the world; in the United States, which also has a problem with police violence, officers kill about 1,200 people per year. “The numbers are very, very high; even if this was a warzone, they would be high,” André Castro, a lawyer in the public defender’s office in Rio de Janeiro, said.
