The July 1993 killing of a group of children outside the Candelaria Church in Rio de Janeiro, allegedly by off-duty military police officers, was not an isolated event. According to the Federal Police of Brazil, almost 6,000 children were killed between 1988 and 1991. Most of these youngsters came from rural areas and urban shantytowns. They do not work or study. They find in the streets of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo a sense of belonging, joining others of their kind in theft, drugs, prostitution, and other illegal activities. When they are old enough to interact with organized crime groups, drug traffickers, and the police, the street kids face another danger: extermination groups. These groups are composed of police officers, ex-officers, and vigilantes who stalk and prey upon the street kids. The problem of street kids is but one of a number of major tasks facing the police in an unstable country such as Brazil. The author addresses some of the other problems, as well as the paradox of the tolerance of the torture and killing of these children in a Christian country. He discusses briefly his concept of a perverse sense of Darwinian theory which seems to hover over the Candelaria Massacre.