It happens so frequently in Brazil, that it even has a name, a “lightning kidnapping.”
(FOX)- That’s when a person is forced to withdraw money from cash machines by robbers, often at gunpoint, and that’s what New Zealand jiu-jitsu fighter, Jason Lee, claimed happened to him.
What made the athlete’s story more shocking, however was that the crime allegedly was committed by military policemen from Rio de Janeiro state, the very people who are supposed to protect people from such acts.
Lee’s story hit the media 10 days before the first Olympic competitions – which start on Aug. 3, two days before the Opening Ceremony at Rio’s Maracanā soccer stadium – and it is far from an isolated case.
The incidence of violent crime in greater Rio de Janeiro increased in every category in May, the most recently-released data, from the year before. There were a record number of homicides: 338 of them, almost the same number as take place in New York City – in a year. Street theft grew about 43 percent.
The crime classified as “homicide due to opposition to the police” is used by many to measure police brutality, and it increased 90 percent from last year. In fact, according to sociologist Gabriela Santos, police violence is likely to increase in neighborhoods where the competitions are taking place, as security forces attempt to “inhibit the actions of petty thieves.”
“No one will be paying attention to what happens in the slums,” Santos told Fox News Latino. “Whatever the police do there will probably go unnoticed, as happened during the World Cup [in 2014]. We can see some signs already, like the increase of people ‘accidentally’ shot by police in recent months. But you also have to see that we have a police that is not being paid and in terrible conditions, risking their lives every day, it’s a lot of pressure, possibility that those actions will go as planned are small. It’s a gunpowder barrel ready to explode.”