RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Early on Wednesday morning, 1,200 heavily armed police officers stormed the slum in the north of Rio de Janeiro, considered a stronghold of the Comando Vermelho criminal group, Rio’s State Police said on Twitter.
“The Rio state government begins the recovery of territory in the community of Jacarezinho. Surrounding communities will also be occupied,” the police stated in one of the messages, accompanied by photographs and videos of uniformed men patrolling the streets.
It is “an intervention in this conflagrated area so that we can implement a state government project. Security is the first step,” State Police spokesman Ivan Blaz told AFP. “The next steps are the ones that will make the difference: the arrival of social services, employment, health, education, and social reception,” added Blaz, who had said earlier that the situation was “apparently calm,” and there were no shootouts between gangs and authorities.
The streets of Jacarezinho – where some 90,000 people live, according to neighborhood associations – were empty, and businesses closed, amid a tense atmosphere and fear among residents, who refused to give interviews, AFP reported.
REPLACEMENT OF THE POLICE PACIFICATION UNITS (UPP)
The mega operation is part of a government program, baptized Cidade Integrada (Integrated City), to transform communities in the state of Rio where criminal gangs and drug traffickers operate, said Governor Cláudio Castro on Twitter.
“Today’s operations are just the beginning of a change that goes beyond security,” he said. Castro said last week that the initiative, with a social and urban emphasis, will differ from those of the past, when authorities applied a military strategy against criminal groups.
Security and violence experts question that approach for its poor results and high death rates. Cidade Integrada will replace the Police Pacification Units (UPP), created in 2008.
With the permanent presence of police in favelas, the UPP initially reduced violence, but the situation then deteriorated, in part due to the severe financial crisis that hit Rio after the 2016 Olympic Games.
In addition to communities dominated by trafficking, the new program will cover territories where vigilante militias operate, groups that have gained ground in recent years by controlling entire neighborhoods through extortion, illegal sale of basic services, and armed disputes.
According to the Security Observatory Network, formed by academic and civil society organizations, Cidade Integrada “repeats a failed formula of military occupation and does not have a designed social program”. “There is no articulation between sectors and much less dialogue with the inhabitants”, added the NGO, which described it as an “electoral move” on the part of the governor, a pre-candidate for the October elections.
MOST LETHAL OPERATION IN HISTORY
Jacarezinho was the scene, last May, of a bloody police raid that left 28 dead, including a uniformed officer. The action aimed to dismantle a gang that recruited children and adolescents for drug trafficking, robbery, kidnapping, and murder.
Human rights organizations described it as the deadliest police operation in Rio’s history and denounced summary executions, which the UN called for an investigation. Since October, the justice system has been prosecuting two agents for homicide.
Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, who won the 2018 presidential elections with a tough-on-crime discourse, supported the police action. Rio de Janeiro, an iconic beach city with 6.7 million inhabitants, is known for its history of violence.
With information from AFP
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