Brazilian police 'kill six people every day'

Brazilian police killed six people every day over a five-year period – totalling more than 11,000 deaths between 2009 and 2013, a report has claimed.

The study, by the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety, states that officers in the country killed more in just five years than police in the US had over a 30-year timespan, in what it labelled “unacceptable standards” revealing systematic “police victimisation”.

The annual report – which also reveals black people were 30.5 per cent more likely to be killed – accused the force of “abusive use of lethal force” when responding to crime and violence.

It suggested that 143,000 rapes were committed in the country in 2013, only a third of which were reported, and said the “crisis in public safety” had cost the economy more than 250 billion Brazilian Real (£61bn) last year alone.