São Paulo’s deadly war on funk

Gustavo Cruz Xavier, 14. Dennys Guilherme dos Santos Franco, 16. Marcos Paulo Oliveira dos Santos, 16. Denys Henrique Quirino da Silva, 16. Luara Victoria Oliveira, 18. Gabriel Rogério de Moraes, 20. Eduardo da Silva, 21. Bruno Gabriel dos Santos, 22. Mateus dos Santos Costa, 23.

In the early hours of last Sunday morning, these nine youths were killed after a police operation in the São Paulo favela of Paraisópolis. Militarized law enforcement broke up a Brazilian funk music street party—a gathering typically known as a baile funk—using tear gas and rubber bullets to kettle the party-goers into the favela’s tight, serpentine alleys. Initial reports said that all nine died in a crush, with death certificates citing suffocation and spinal fractures as the causes of the casualties.

Eyewitness reports and videos circulating on social media show the police surrounding the party-goers and began attacking them, using truncheons and rubber bullets. Residents say the victims were in two alleyways when they were crushed in a stampede after police advanced on the group and closed off exit routes. Public prosecutors are investigating the deaths as murders.

The police’s version of events is that a patrol in the neighborhood was pursuing two suspects on a motorcycle, who had reportedly...