A massive police operation against drug traffickers in a Brazilian favela on Thursday left 25 people dead, turning the impoverished Rio de Janeiro neighborhood into a battlefield and drawing condemnation from rights groups.
A policeman was among those killed in the early morning raid on Jacarezinho, on Rio’s north side, where residents awoke to explosions, heavy gunfire and helicopters overhead.
Police confirmed the toll — and investigators said it was the deadliest police operation in the history of Rio de Janeiro state.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Police identified the other 24 dead as “suspects” and said that all protocols had been followed before officers opened fire, but rights groups and academics cried foul.
“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?” she said.
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, Agence France-Presse journalists said.
Residents reported seeing corpses lying on the pavement in pools of blood, and numerous bodies being taken out in an armored police vehicle, a local community leader said, asking that their name not be published for safety reasons.
At least two people were wounded when a 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 neighborhood during the raid, passing what looked like high-powered rifles from hand to hand.
“Unfortunately, there were many clashes in the area. There is nothing to celebrate with this toll,” one police official told a news conference, adding that the officer killed was shot in the head.
Rights groups and residents later inspected the houses targeted — some had blood stains and damage from the shoot-out.
Police said the operation targeted a gang suspected of recruiting children and teenagers for drug trafficking, robberies, assaults and murders.
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 neighborhood is considered a base for the Comando Vermelho, or Red Command, the iconic beach city’s biggest drug gang.
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 COVID-19 pandemic except in “absolutely exceptional circumstances.”
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