Massacre of 100 Inmates in Brazil Prison Spurs Condemnation of Police : Violence: More than 100 inmates were killed during prison raid. Critics say Sao Paulo force follows a ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ policy.

The massacre of more than 100 inmates in a Sao Paulo prison has turned the spotlight on what human rights groups say is one of the world’s most violent police forces.

Horror tales leaked out soon after riot troopers raided Carandiru prison, Latin America’s largest, to put down a rebellion in October. Autopsies later showed that many prisoners were executed after they surrendered. Others were indiscriminately shot or torn apart by dogs.

Officially, 111 inmates were killed. But human rights groups and inmates said the true number topped 200. The prison held about 7,500 inmates, double its intended capacity.

Lawyers, church leaders, politicians and human rights groups say such brutality is a trademark of police in this city of 10 million people, South America’s largest.

They accuse the Sao Paulo State Police force of following a “shoot first, ask questions later” policy that aims to eliminate criminal suspects, prisoners and anyone else seen as a menace to society.

Col. Eduardo Assumpcao, commander of the Sao Paulo State Police, denies the charges.

“It is society that is violent. All we do is respond to this violence,” he said in an interview.

Americas Watch, a New York-based human rights group, said it was odd that “every year, police kill hundreds of criminal suspects on the streets of Sao Paulo in purported shootouts.”

“The casualties on the side of the police have been consistently low, casting doubt on the claim that these are predominantly shootouts,” the group said in a report issued after the prison massacre.

Official figures said that in the first 10 months of 1992, Sao Paulo State Police killed 1,264 people in shootouts--about one every six hours--while 52 policemen lost their lives.

In New York, a city of 7 million people, police killed 27 criminal suspects in shootouts in 1991. The same year, Sao Paulo police killed 1,074 people, according to the University of Sao Paulo’s Center for the Study of Violence.

“The Sao Paulo police force is one of the world’s most violent, if not the most violent,” said Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, a political scientist and sociologist who is director of the center.

The victims usually are poor, nonwhite and between the ages of 18 and 25, Pinheiro said. Many live in the sprawling slums on the city’s outskirts and are killed “merely for being suspected petty criminals.”

The Rev. William Sheehan, a Roman Catholic chaplain at Carandiru prison, said the killings could be partly attributed to “the fact that for Brazilian society as a whole and for the police in particular, prisoners and the poor are non-persons.”

Sheehan, a native of Brockton, Mass., who has worked in Brazil 47 years, said the officers sent to quell the riot “are specially trained to exterminate people and when they do, they are promoted.”

Teresa Caldeira, an anthropologist at the University of Campinas, also said law enforcement officials “measure police efficiency by the number of suspects killed.”

After analyzing the official records of more than 3,500 such killings from April, 1970, to June, 1992, journalist Caco Barcellos found that almost 60% of the victims had no criminal record.

“Suspicion is the only criterion police follow when choosing most of their victims,” he said.

Barcellos recently published his findings in a book, “Rota 66--A History of the Killer Police Force.” Rota is an acronym for one of Sao Paulo’s most violent police units.

A recent report by the Sao Paulo Bar Assn. said shop owners pay “police and extermination groups” to summarily execute children.

“At least two minors are executed each day in Sao Paulo,” the report said.

“In a country where authorities steal, where corruption is common practice and where there is violence everywhere, it would be very difficult for police to behave in a civilized manner,” he said.