Human rights activists have voiced outrage after Rio de Janeiro’s parliament approved plans to pay police officers a “wild west bonus” for “neutralizing criminals” during operations.
The move is a throwback to the mid-1990s when Rio’s then governor, Marcello Alencar, introduced similar legislation that caused an explosion of extrajudicial killings in the city’s favelas.
That law was scrapped in 1998, after three years of bloodshed, but on Tuesday lawmakers voted to revive the policy as part of new legislation relating to Rio’s civil police. Under the rule, civil police officers would be paid bonuses of between 10% and 150% of their salaries for capturing high-caliber weapons and “neutralizing criminals”.
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