RIO DE JANEIRO, (Reuters) – Police arrested gang members and seized large quantities of drugs and weapons in a large Rio de Janeiro slum they occupied today, in a major advance in the war against the city’s drug lords.
The Alemao slum was the second to be retaken by police in a week after security forces went in pursuit of gangs who had gone on the rampage, setting fire to around 100 cars and buses in the city that will host the 2016 Olympic Games.
Military police backed by army and navy troops occupied the hillside slum, or favelas, using tanks, armored trucks and helicopters in the largest raid ever by Brazilian security forces in the Rio’s slums.
They met with little resistance from the cornered traffickers apart from a brief exchange of gunfire in which one suspected gang member was killed. Local station TV Globo said the death toll stood at three by Sunday night.
Police seized at least 10 tonnes of cocaine and cannabis and stashes of heavy weaponry.
“We won. We brought liberty to the population of Alemao. Now it’s a matter of searches, imprisonments and detentions,” said military police chief Mario Sergio Duarte, who said all of Alemao’s 30,000 homes would be scoured by security forces.
Dozens of lawless favelas sprawl over the tropical city’s hills, many of which are no-go areas even for police. But the unprecedented heavy presence of joint security forces enabled them to retake the drug lords’ Alemao fiefdom with ease.
TV images showed police placing a Brazilian flag at the peak of the hill in Alemao, symbolizing the restoration of state authority, as children played in an outdoor swimming pool at the abandoned luxury home of one drug lord.
At least a dozen were arrested, including a drug lord known as “Zeu” who is believed responsible for the 2002 killing of a local TV reporter. Police arrested him at his home and local residents jeered as he was led away to a police vehicle.
Among the traffickers being hunted in Alemao were those who fled the Vila Cruzeiro slum after police invaded it last week. At least 45 traffickers were killed in that raid, during which a 14-year-old girl was killed by a stray bullet.
Police raids into Rio’s crime-infested favelas are common, but the latest have caught the public’s attention with the sheer number of troops involved and their resolve to retake control outright rather than go after specific gang members.
They have made more than 100 arrests in the last week.
“The reclaiming of the Alemao complex by the state is a fundamental and decisive step in the public security policy set out for Rio de Janeiro,” said state governor Sergio Cabral.
“But the work of guaranteeing once and for all, citizens’ rights to come and go has only just begun,” he said in a statement.
Large numbers of poor live in Rio’s sprawling hillside favelas, making it harder for police to hunt down the gangs. Many innocent slum-dwellers have been killed over the years in the crossfire from gun battles between gangs and police.
Around 100,000 are estimated to live in the Alemao favela.
Though the raids’ success has encouraged crime-weary locals, the latest wave of violence underscores the challenges authorities face in improving security in the city as it prepares to host matches during the 2014 World Cup in Brazil and the Olympic Games two years later.
Log into your account
Log in for full access to stabroeknews.com. You can also post comments, and manage your email subscription.
