Getulio Vargas Hospital staff take away an injured particular person from a police truck after he was injured in a police operation towards alleged drug traffickers within the Complexo do Alemao favela the place the legal group “Comando Vermelho” operates in Rio de Janeiro, on Tuesday.
Silvia Izquierdo/AP
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Silvia Izquierdo/AP
RIO DE JANEIRO — About 2,500 Brazilian police and troopers launched a large raid on a drug-trafficking gang in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday, arresting 81 suspects and sparking shootouts that left a minimum of 60 suspects and 4 law enforcement officials useless, officers stated.
The operation included officers in helicopters and armored automobiles and focused the infamous Purple Command within the sprawling low-income favelas of Complexo de Alemao and Penha, police stated.
The police operation was one of the vital violent in Brazil’s latest historical past, with human rights organizations calling for investigations into the deaths.
Rio’s state Gov. Claudio Castro stated in a video posted on X that 60 legal suspects had been “neutralized” throughout the huge raid that he known as the most important such operation within the metropolis’s historical past. Some 81 suspects had been arrested, whereas 93 rifles and greater than half a ton of medication had been seized, the state authorities stated, including that these killed “resisted police action.”
Rio’s civil police stated on X that 4 officers died in Tuesday’s operation. “The cowardly attacks by criminals against our agents will not go unpunished,” it stated.
An unknown variety of individuals had been wounded.
The United Nations’ human rights physique stated it was “horrified” by the lethal police operation, known as for efficient investigations and reminded authorities of their obligations beneath worldwide human rights legislation.
César Muñoz, director of Human Rights Watch in Brazil, known as Tuesday’s occasions “a huge tragedy” and a “disaster.”
“The public prosecutor’s office must open its own investigations and clarify the circumstances of each death,” Muñoz stated in an announcement.
Footage on social media confirmed hearth and smoke rising from the 2 favelas as gunfire rang out. The town’s Training Division stated 46 faculties throughout the 2 neighborhoods had been closed, and the close by Federal College of Rio de Janeiro canceled evening lessons and advised individuals on campus to hunt shelter.
Suspected gang members blocked roads in northern and southeastern Rio in response to the raid, native media reported. At the very least 70 buses had been commandeered for use within the blockades, inflicting vital harm, the town’s bus group Rio Onibus stated.
The operation Tuesday adopted a yr of investigation into the legal group, police stated.
Gov. Castro, from the conservative opposition Liberal Occasion, stated the federal authorities ought to be offering extra help to fight crime — a swipe on the administration of leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Gleisi Hoffmann, the Lula administration’s liaison with the parliament, agreed that coordinated motion was wanted however pointed to a latest crackdown on cash laundering for example of the federal authorities’s motion on organized crime.
Police collect exterior the Getulio Vargas Hospital the place a colleague was introduced after getting injured in an operation towards alleged drug traffickers within the Complexo do Alemao favela the place the legal group “Comando Vermelho” operates in Rio de Janeiro, on Tuesday.
Silvia Izquierdo/AP
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Silvia Izquierdo/AP
Vice President Geraldo Alckmin and numerous ministers met in response to the operation on Tuesday afternoon. Chief of Workers Rui Costa requested an emergency assembly in Rio on Wednesday, with him in attendance in addition to Justice Minister Ricardo Lewandowski.
Rising from Rio’s prisons, the Purple Command legal gang has expanded its management in favelas lately.
Rio has been the scene of deadly police raids for many years. In March 2005, some 29 individuals had been killed in Rio’s Baixada Fluminense area, whereas in Could 2021, 28 had been killed within the Jacarezinho favela.
Whereas the Tuesday’s police operation was just like earlier ones, its scale was unprecedented, stated Luis Flavio Sapori, a sociologist and public security skilled at Pontifical Catholic College of Minas Gerais.
“What’s different about today’s operation is the magnitude of the victims. These are war numbers,” he stated.
He argued that these sorts of operations are inefficient as a result of they don’t are inclined to catch the masterminds, however slightly goal underlings who can later get replaced.
“It’s not enough to go in, exchange gunfire, and leave. There’s a lack of strategy in Rio de Janeiro’s public security policy,” Sapori stated. “Some lower-ranking members of these factions are killed, but those individuals are quickly replaced by others.”
The Marielle Franco Institute, a nonprofit based by the slain councilwoman ‘s household to proceed her legacy of preventing for the rights of individuals dwelling in favelas, additionally criticized the operation.
“This is not a public safety policy. It’s a policy of extermination, that makes the everyday life of Black and poor people a Russian roulette,” it stated in an announcement.
