Crime and police activity during the COVID-19 pandemic in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

This paper analyzes crime reports and police activity in Rio de Janeiro during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results indicate there was an overall drop in crime rates starting in April, especially in property crimes, which plummet to extremely unusual levels when compared with previous patterns. This pattern is most likely associated with an unprecedented decline in public mobility in some areas of the state. We show that the most significant reductions in street robberies occurred in neighborhoods where there was a greater decline in presence on the streets. Measures of police activity, in particular drug seizures and different types of arrests, displayed a reduction comparable with the drop in criminal indicators. In contrast, the number of police killings followed a unique pattern: in April, immediately after the adoption of social distance measures, this indicator increased above the average from the previous four years; as of May, however, it assumed a downward trend, which turned into extraordinarily low levels in June. The extreme variation in the use of force by the police during the pandemic reinforces the documented dissonance between police lethality and criminal dynamics in Rio de Janeiro, shedding light on the mechanisms that regulate police violence in the state.