Basilisk wrote:
"Wait, cops like this ACTUALLY EXIST in Brazil? Hence the actual logo shown here that "the actual police unit" uses? Huh? (Don't mind my newbness, just started really paying attention to politics and news about a month ago.)"

Yes, Basilisk, there are cops like that in Brazil. I know it may sound kind of incomprehensible for someone from a developed country (I assume that is your case), but as a Brazilian I think I can paint a picture of the circumstances in here:

In many large Brazilian cities (Rio being the perfect example...) drug overlords basically transformed poor neighborhoods, the favelas ("slums") into feuds where the Brazilian government has no authority anymore. Those drug lords are *heavily* armed, using stuff that you normally just see in wars. And in fact that is the situation: a long-standing civil war. So you may think of elite cop units like BOPE more as, well, I don't know a good American equivalent, maybe assault teams of navy seals? Anyway, they *are* killing machines (that logo exists for a good reason :) and as in many wars it is known that torture does occur in a routine basis.

BTW, the day before yesterday there was a lot of shooting in a slum in Rio, and our news networks have a brutal video (in Brazilian Portuguese, but the images speak by themselves) of dealers being shot by cops in a helicopter. That may give you a feeling of what happens in here. Here: http://tinyurl.com/28w5v3

You may also be interested in seeing the trailer of "Elite Squad", the movie, at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jeTL9hC3Wg . Not real life as the video above, but heavily inspired on it.