Police killings in Rio soar 18 percent in 2019: data

Figures published by the Public Security Institute late Tuesday also show intentional homicides not involving police fell 19 percent from the previous year to 3,995.

Far-right governor Wilson Witzel, who took power last January on a promise to get tough on crime, has made no apologies for his hardline security strategy.

He previously advocated using a "missile" to blow up criminals in a violent slum and supports the use of police snipers to take out suspects from long distances.

"The order is clear: if someone is carrying an assault rifle, they have to be neutralized in lethal fashion immediately," Witzel told local media in March.

He sparked further outcry in May after posting a video on Twitter of himself in a police helicopter as officers fired toward a favela below.

"In Rio, large police operations have become in recent years the main form of intervention by the police," Silvia Ramos, a security expert at Candido Mendes University, told AFP.

"It is a policy based on confrontation and not enough on intelligence and planning."

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