Police made two key arrests on Wednesday in Rio de Janeiro’s biggest slum as they get ready to wrest control of it from drug traffickers, scrambling to prepare for the 2014 Soccer World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games.
At dawn, about 50 men from the military police’s crack special forces blocked a road leading to the Rocinha favela, controlled by drug traffickers for 30 years, to search all incoming vehicles.
The timing of a broader operation remained unclear.
Late on Wednesday, local media ventured that a broader pacification operation would come at the weekend. The daily newspaper O Globo reported that two alleged drug traffickers were nabbed — “Peixe” and “Coelho,” the latter being the right-hand man of local drug kingpin Antonio Francisco Bomfim Lopes, alias Nem.
Built on a steep hillside overlooking the “Marvelous City” and located between two wealthy neighborhoods, Rocinha is home to 120,000 people and is a drug trafficking bastion.
Police said Rocinha will become the 19th favela to be ridden of traffickers who have been in control for the past 30 years.
The neighboring Vidigal shantytown is also expected to be pacified soon.
Since 2008, authorities in Rio, which has one of the highest murder rates in the country, have been in a race to restore security in the city before the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics which Brazil will host.
Local press reports and some residents said police were expected to make their move on Sunday.
However, a security spokesman said: “We do not disclose ahead of time when police pacification units move” into the favelas.
He said police actions over the past two days were “routine operations.”
Their aim, according to the daily O Dia, was to “snuff out drug trafficking” before the assault by security forces backed by commandos.
On Wednesday, some residents fled the favela to seek refuge with relatives for fear of gunbattles between police and members of drug gangs, reporters on the scene said.
In another sign that the police assault was imminent, local drug baron Nem on Sunday gave a farewell party and imposed a curfew on Rocinha.
Police have offered a US$2,858 reward for information leading to the capture of Nem, who reportedly had to be treated at a local health clinic after he drank liquor mixed with ecstasy at the farewell bash.
“From Thursday, everybody must stay home and children must not go to school. We are fearful because we don’t know where to go. The only solution is to stay at home and pray,” one resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told O Globo.
Critics of the police pacification drive complain that drug traffickers have been given time to flee before security forces move in.
A year ago, about 2,600 troops and police backed by armor and helicopters occupied the Complexo do Alemao in a massive operation after a wave of attacks by drug traffickers on police stations and vehicles that left 37 people dead.
Endemic and chronic urban violence has long sullied the image of Rio, where more than 1.5 million people — about a third of the local population — live in 1,000 slums spread throughout the city.
On Sunday, TV cameraman Gelson Domingos was shot in the chest while covering a shootout between special operations police and traffickers in another area favela, Antares, and was declared dead at a local hospital.
Four suspected criminals were killed during the shootout that lasted nearly an hour and eight accused drug traffickers were arrested, according to police, who also seized weapons, ammunition and drugs.
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