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News > Brazil

Brazil Police Ramp up Massive Raids in Rio Ahead of Olympics

  • Police officers and residents in a favela in Rio de Janeiro in May 2015.

    Police officers and residents in a favela in Rio de Janeiro in May 2015. | Photo: Reuters

Published 3 August 2016
Opinion

The Brazilian government has deployed 82,000 police, military, and private security for the Rio Olympics.

Brazilian police Wednesday deepened its crackdown on Rio de Janeiro's slums two days before the opening of the Olympic Games when 450 officers stormed a bloc of favelas known as Complexo do Alemao.

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The so-called mega-operation was comprised of 300 civil police, 150 military police, and an armored helicopter, in an effort to serve 47 warrants, and “identify criminals” in neighborhoods near the city´s international airport, the Brazilian daily O Globo reported. The raid reportedly resulted in “intense” shootouts.

At least one police officer was injured in the exchange of gunfire, according to O Globo. The local newspaper Voz da Comunidade reported at least two people were killed.

The operation continued an investigation that began last year to root out criminal networks, O Globo reported.

The Complexo do Alemao collection of favelas, located near Rio’s international airport, is home to some 100,000 people and one of the sites where violence — including frequent gun battles — is concentrated in the city, alongside a handful of other favelas where warring drug gangs fiercely battle over turf.

“In Alemao, deaths aren’t investigated,” wrote Daiene Mendes in a diary published in The Guardian earlier this year documenting daily life in the neighborhood leading up to the Olympics.

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The 450-strong police operation in Alemao comes just days after police raided areas of the Complexo da Mare, another group of favelas in Rio’s North Zone and one of the most violent parts of the city, for at least three consecutive days. Local community journalist Gizele Martins wrote that Mare residents are living “under siege” and terror in the name of the “invented” war on drugs that allows massacres in poor, communities of color to protect foreign tourists attending tony events like the Olympics.

A total of 82,000 police, military, and private security have been deployed for the Rio Olympics. According to O Globo, all suspended police officers have been recalled to the Rio force to support the massive effort.

Heavy policing of the favelas may be in overdrive ahead of the Olympics, but the phenomenon is nothing new. Military police occupied Alemao in 2010 in the name of cracking down on gangs. Two years later, a community policing project known as Pacification Police Units, or UPP, took over the zone.

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According to the Globe and Mail's Brazil correspondent Stephanie Nolan, Brazilians widely regard the UPP as a failed experiment, as violent clashes between police and gangs in Alemao and other favelas continue unabated, and many areas bordering the Olympic village remain insecure. The project is financially and politically bankrupt, and gangs have reclaimed much of the territory it lost to police n recent years, Nolan reported.

Rio police have a notorious reputation of brutality and racist policing that disproportionately targets poor Black communities. Brazilian police reportedly kill eight people every day, and the situation is even more dire in Rio de Janeiro. The vast majority of victims are Black men.

The U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child reported late last year that Brazilian police were killing homeless children as part of a campaign to “clean the streets” in preparation for the Rio Olympics.

In a more insidious form of violence, human rights groups warned in the leadup to the games that up to 200,000 people have faced the risk of being evicted to make way for the Olympics. Thousands of families have already been displaced.

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