Police in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo have killed more than 11,000 people in the past six years, many execution-style, according to a report released Tuesday by Human Rights Watch.
Few of the officers have been charged in the extra judicial killings, which are often labelled in police reports as the deaths of suspects who resisted arrest, the report said.
The 122-page declaration echoes a 2008 United Nations' finding that police throughout Brazil were responsible for a "significant portion" of 48,000 slayings the year before.
"Extra judicial killing of criminal suspects is not the answer to violent crime," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, America's director at Human Rights Watch. "The residents of Rio and Sao Paulo need more effective policing, not more violence from the police."