Trigger warning: graphic police violence

On the morning of March 16th, Claudia Silva Ferreira left her house in Rio de Janeiro to buy bread. On her way, she was caught in a gun fight between drug traffickers and a pacifying police unit, who shot her. Claudia was placed in the back of a police vehicle to be taken to a nearby hospital, but on the way to the hospital, she fell out of the trunk. Caught on the car, her body dragged along the pavement for over two blocks. She was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Claudia was a poor black woman living in one of Brazil’s urban slums, known as favelas. 

The police later tried to claim ...