Cop death toll in Brazil’s Rio reaches 100

APOLICE officer killed on Saturday in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro state was the 100th slain there so far this year – part of a grim surge in violent crime in the region.

Officer Fabio Jose Cavalcante was shot dead while on duty in Baixada Fluminense, a poor, highcrime suburb of Rio, which hosted the Summer Olympics last year.

In 2016, 146 police were killed in Rio, 100 of whom were not on duty at the time Since 1995, the force has lost more than 3,000 officers.

A year after the world applauded Rio’s successful staging of the Summer Games, Brazil’s second biggest city is in deep financial difficulty and the demoralised police are struggling to contain wellarmed drug gangs in the favelas.

President Michel Temer’s decision in July to deploy thousands of soldiers to Rio acknowledged that state police have lost the ability to cope with the bloody struggle against the drug traffickers.

Brazil as is one of the most deadly countries in the world.

newspaper recently reported that this year’s six-month homicide tally has reached just over 28,000. That is equivalent to 155 killings a day or six an hour around the country of 208 million people. The toll is almost 7 percent higher than last year and indicates Brazil may again break the ceiling of 60,000 homicides a year in 2017.