With 650 deaths registered between January and October 2025, the state confirms a reversal in the downward trend and is only behind the 2024 record
The state of recorded 650 deaths resulting from police intervention between the months of January and October 2025. The volume of deaths places the current year as the second with the highest fatality rates caused by security agents in the last five years. The index is surpassed only by the numbers from 2024, a year impacted by Operation Summer, considered the most lethal action since the Carandiru massacre.
The data, which includes actions by civil and military police officers (on duty or off duty), consolidates an inversion in the state violence curve under the management of (Republicans). Before the current government, the state had reached the lowest level of lethality in two decades, the result of a 54% reduction achieved between 2020 and 2022, during the previous administration.
In the current scenario, however, statistics point to a 69% increase in police lethality compared to previous equivalent periods. The final balance for 2025 does not yet include data from November.
Contrasts in punishment
The year 2025 was also marked by different judicial outcomes in cases involving unarmed victims. In an episode that occurred in July, in the south of the capital, carpenter Guilherme Dias Santos Ferreira, 26, was killed in the back by an off-duty police officer who claimed to have mistaken him for a robber. The agent obtained provisional release in less than two weeks, benefiting from having a fixed residence and being a first-time offender.
The use of body cameras was decisive in the arrest in the act of agents involved in the execution of a homeless man in June, shot with a rifle after he had already surrendered.
When commenting on the rates, the Public Security Secretariat (SSP) declared that it maintains rigor in the investigations of all deaths, with supervision from the internal affairs bodies, Public Ministry and the Judiciary. The ministry also highlighted that, since 2023, it has applied sanctions — such as dismissals and arrests — to more than 1,200 employees for misconduct.
