Winners

For his 2008 prize-winning article, Raphael Gomide went undercover in the Rio de Janeiro Police Department, the most lethal in Brazil. In 2007, Rio set a macabre record of 1 330 civilians and 151 officers killed in alleged shootings. The Police Department is frequently accused of corruption, crime and flouting human rights. To learn about its ideology and role in training officers, Raphael passed a public competition and underwent a month of police training. He chose to go undercover to try to understand the police from within, without censorship. He heard colleagues promising to kill rather than arrest criminals, and instructors teaching techniques to forge a crime scene so they could claim self defence. Through the testimony of officers, the story reveals that the police tolerate and encourage lethal violence. Raphael has been a journalist for over a decade and has worked for four top dailies in Brazil. He has also won the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism with the series of articles “Slaves of the 21st Century”.