The IOC chose to NOT hold its games in a filthy, crime-ridden city. Gee...go figure, huh! Rio may not be a whole lot better, but are there 30 murders each week?
Doesn’t sound like Rio is exactly Nirvana....
“This new study by a think tank linked to the Roman Catholic Church suggests that things are improving. In 1994, out of every 100,000 inhabitants of Rio, 78 met a violent death.
Last year that figure had fallen to 50. In a way, this is a surprise. The violent drug gangs which control Rio’s shanty towns are still very much alive, and until recently the city’s police force was better known for its brutality than for its efficiency.
However, analysts say a number of factors have contributed to the fall in the number of murders. The local government has invested millions of dollars in an effort to integrate the shanty towns into the urban infrastructure.
Police operations have reduced the extent to which drug-related violence spills over into middle-class areas, and local non-governmental organisations have waged a tireless campaign to persuade people not to carry firearms.
But Rio continues to be a violent place. Its new, lower murder rate is still five times as high as that of New York, and meanwhile, in Brazil’s biggest city. Sao Paulo, the tide of murders in poor areas is rising inexorably. “
from 2005
http://www.letterfromthecapitol.com/letterfromthecapitol/2005/04/world_murder_ca.html
World Murder Capital?
Rio de Janeiro’s name means River of January, and the city is known to its cariocas as “Marvelous City.” But a Washington Times piece today makes clear that Murderous City is a more appropriate title. A staggering 80 to 95 people a day are killed in Rio, mostly by drug gang shootouts in the favela slums that ring the city. This translates in round figures to 29,000 to 35,000 annually. Rio is a city of 10 million, roughly 25% more than inhabit New York City. Thus for NYC a comparable murder toll range would be 23,000 to 28,000; the 2004 NYC figure was under 600. Put another way, Rio has some 40 to 50 times NYC’s per capita murder rate, with a 300 to 350 murders per 100,000 rate. (The per capita number of 55 per 100,000 given in the WT article for Rio is clearly wrong—someone misplaced a decimal point.) One final frame of reference: With a US population of about 300 million, 30 times Rio’s total, multiply the annual Rio murder range by 30 to get an equivalent murder total for the US: the range would be, in round figures, 850,000 to 1.1 million!!!! See a problem here?