MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Violent crime costs Brazil 5.4% of GDP; 2.212 people dead in police operations

The annual report said 490 police officers were murdered last year, 43 more than in 2012, while over the past five years, 1,170 officers have been killed.

Violent crime cost Brazil 258 billion Reais (about 100 billion dollars) in 2013, a figure equivalent to 5.4% of the country's GDP, according to the new Brazilian Public Safety Annual Report, in which it is stated that an average of six people died in police operations each day during the year.

 The report, which will be presented in detail on Tuesday at the Brazilian Public Safety Forum in Sao Paulo, says that 2,212 people died in police operations during 2013 and 490 police officers died while on duty or were murdered.

The document says that the slight drop last year from the 2,332 deaths at the hands of the police in 2012 “does not indicate an improvement or change in trend.”

Between 2009 and 2013, authorities registered 11,197 deaths in police operations, a figure exceeding the number of deaths at the hands of the police in the United States over the past 30 years, the communiqué said.

The figure includes statistics for cases involving police officers both on and off the force.

The annual report also found that 490 police officers were murdered last year, 43 more than during the previous year, while over the past five years, 1,170 officers have been killed.

To calculate the economic cost of the violence, the Ipea economic research institute analyzed the public safety health care expenditures at different levels of government, as well as other parameters.

The Forum emphasized that although Brazil spent about 1.26% of GDP on public security in 2013, significantly more than the United States (1.02%) but about the same as European Union countries (1.3%), “the results obtained here are very far from those registered in those countries,” indicating that “the resources are insufficient to deal with the local situation or, at least, are very badly utilized”.