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epa09181542 Members of the Police carry out a police operation against a gang of drug traffickers, in a favela of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 06 May 2021. At least 25 people died, including a police officer, and another 5 were injured, two of them when they were mobilising in the subway, during a police operation this Thursday against a gang of drug traffickers in a Rio de Janeiro favela, local media reported. EPA-EFE/Andre Coelho

Bloodbath in Brazil as 25 die in police raid on Rio slum

  • Police operation on suspected gang members results in high body count
  • Violence took place in a favela in Rio de Janeiro’s Jacarezinho neighbourhood
Brazil

A massive police operation against drug traffickers in a Brazilian favela left 25 people dead, turning the impoverished Rio de Janeiro neighbourhood into a battlefield and drawing condemnation from rights groups.

Media reports said a policeman was among those killed in the early Thursday morning raid on Jacarezinho, on Rio’s north side, where residents awoke to explosions, heavy gunfire and helicopters overhead.

Activists and media reports, citing the police, put the total death toll at 25 – which, if confirmed, would be one of the deadliest police operations in the history of Rio de Janeiro state. A 2005 raid in the Baixada Fluminense in Rio’s violent northern outskirts killed 29 people.

“Who are the dead? Young black men. That’s why the police talk about ‘24 suspects’. Being a young, black favela resident automatically makes you a suspect to the police. They just keep piling up bodies and saying, ‘They’re all criminals’,” said Silvia Ramos, head of the Security Observatory at Candido Mendes University.

“Is this the public security policy we want? Shoot-outs, killings and police massacres?”

Jacarezinho residents take pictures of belongings covered in blood. Photo: AFP

Amnesty International lambasted the police for the “reprehensible and unjustifiable” loss of life.

“The number of people killed in this police operation is reprehensible, as is the fact that, once again, this massacre took place in a favela,” said Jurema Werneck, executive director of Amnesty International Brazil.

Large groups of heavily armed police could be seen streaming into the favela as frightened residents tentatively went about their business once the gunfire died down.

Residents reported seeing corpses lying on the pavement in pools of blood, and numerous bodies being taken out in an armoured police vehicle, a local community leader said, asking for safety reasons that his name not be published.

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At least two people were wounded when the subway car they were riding in was apparently caught in the crossfire during the operation, news site G1 reported.

TV network GloboNews showed aerial images of armed suspects fleeing from one residence to another in the densely packed neighbourhood during the raid, passing what looked like high-powered rifles from hand to hand.

Rights groups and residents later inspected the houses targeted, some with blood stains and damage from the shoot-out.

The scene where an alleged drug trafficker was reportedly killed by police while trying to escape. Photo: AFP

Police said the operation targeted a gang suspected of recruiting children and teenagers for drug trafficking, robberies, assaults and murders.

They said the sting grew out of a surveillance operation that obtained a warrant to wiretap suspects’ communications.

That led them to identify 21 gang members “responsible for ensuring the gang’s territorial dominance,” they said.

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The group “had set up a war-style structure with hundreds of ‘soldiers’ equipped with rifles, pistols, grenades, bulletproof vests, camouflage fatigues and other military accessories,” they said.

The neighbourhood is considered a base for the Comando Vermelho, or Red Command, the iconic beach city’s biggest drug gang.

Drugs seized during the police raid. Photo: AP

However, rights activists questioned why recruiting minors – a common practice among Brazilian gangs – would lead to such a deadly operation.

There were also questions about the timing: the operation came despite a Supreme Court ruling barring police from carrying out raids in Brazil’s impoverished favelas during the coronavirus pandemic except in “absolutely exceptional circumstances”.

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Police did not immediately respond to a request for further information on what led to the raid.

Rio, a city of 6.7 million people, is notorious for its violence.

Rio de Janeiro state was placed under military intervention in 2018 in a bid to rein in the violence, which includes a troubled history of deadly police shootings.

Residents protest the police operation. Photo: AP

Last year, at least 1,245 people were killed by police in the state, according to ISP, Rio’s public security institute.

That was down from a record 1,814 police killings in 2019, but still higher than, for example, the 1,127 people killed by police last year across the entire United States.

“It is unacceptable that Rio de Janeiro’s public security policy continues to bet on killing as a strategy,” said the Igarape Institute, a think tank.

Robert Muggah, the institute’s co-founder, said the deadly raid was “the predictable outcome of years of belligerent tough-on-crime rhetoric” from pro-gun, far-right leaders including President Jair Bolsonaro and Rio’s recently impeached governor, Wilson Witzel.

Additional reporting by Reuters

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: 25 killed in police raid on traffickers in Rio
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