By William Jones, Contributing Reporter
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Military Police in Rio de Janeiro are Brazil’s most corrupt police force, according to the National Victimization Survey, commissioned by the Ministry of Justice and the United Nations Program for Development. The study also showed that the state of Rio is subject to more crime than the rest of the entire Southeast region, including São Paulo.
According to the research acquired by Brazilian daily newspaper Extra, the Military Police of Rio de Janeiro is in the top spot for police extortion in the country. The survey concluded that Rio’s Military Police is far more likely to demand bribes from citizens, as the state’s MP is behind over thirty percent of all reported incidents.
The Military Police of São Paulo, the state with the highest number of military officers, were responsible for 18.2 percent of all reported bribing incidents.
The statistics also showed that police corruption is more likely to be carried out by officers who are male and white. The statistics showed that 78.9 percent of crimes involving police officers as perpetrators were carried out by men. Out of that total, 42.2 percent where white, 42.35 percent were “pardo” (mixed) and eleven percent were black.
National Secretary of Public Safety, Regina Miki, could not hide from the statistics but attempted to defend the police’s reputation by placing the blame on the society that has bred such behavior. “This research has shown that the military police is the most corrupt in the country. But I think we should understand that the police are recruited from our society, this is a portrait of [society],” she told the tabloid Extra.
The National Victimization Survey is a study that records incidents of crime from information provided by average citizens in order to compare them with the official data recorded by police, sorting them by location, social status, skin color, age, sex and income. The survey, which began collecting data in 2010, had a sample size of 78,000 people. Researchers conducted 8,550 interviews in the state of Rio de Janeiro. The complete study will be released next month.
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