RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — A police operation Thursday targeting gang members in Rio de Janeiro’s largest complex of favelas, or low-income communities, left at least 18 people dead in one of the city’s deadliest raids recently and one is already leading more criticism of police violence.
Rio authorities said 16 suspected criminals were killed in clashes with police in the Complexo do Alemao, along with a policeman and a woman. A police spokesman said the raid targeted a criminal group that was stealing cars and robbing banks and invading nearby neighborhoods.
Videos circulating on social media showed intense shootouts between criminals, as well as a police helicopter flying low over the small brick houses. Police in Rio have used helicopters to shoot at targets, even in densely populated residential areas, and video shows shots fired from the favela at the aircraft.
At the scene of the attack, Associated Press reporters saw residents carrying about 10 bodies as bystanders shouted, “We want peace!” Residents said those who tried to help the wounded risked arrest.
“There’s a massacre inside, which the police are calling an operation,” one woman told the AP, speaking on condition of anonymity because she feared reprisals from authorities. “They don’t let us help (the victims),” she added, saying she saw one man arrested for trying to do so.
The Rio police spokesman said some of the criminals wore uniforms to disguise themselves as police officers.
“I’d rather they (the suspects) didn’t react and then we could have arrested 15, 14 of them.” But unfortunately they chose to shoot our police officers,” said Ronaldo Oliveira, a Rio police investigator.
Rio state governor Claudio Castro said on Twitter that he regretted the policeman’s death.
“I will continue to fight crime with all my might. We will not abandon the mission to guarantee peace and security to the people of our country,” Castro said.
But many disagree with the government’s strategy to tackle violence and organized crime, an approach that regularly leads to deadly police operations. An action in Rio’s Villa Cruzeiro favela in May killed more than 20 people.
Thursday’s operation was aimed at tracking down and arresting criminal leaders, some from other states, police said in an early statement.
“ENOUGH with this genocidal policy, governor!” Taliria Petrone, a federal lawmaker from Rio, said in response to the governor’s tweet. “This failed public safety policy is leaving residents and police in droves. It is no longer possible to keep piling up black bodies and favela residents every day!”
Alemao is a complex of 13 favelas in northern Rio, home to around 70,000 people. Nearly three-quarters of them are Afro-Brazilian, according to a July 2020 study published by the Brazilian Institute for Social and Economic Analysis.
Earlier this year, Brazil’s Supreme Court established a number of conditions for police to carry out actions in Rio’s favelas as a means of reducing police killings and human rights abuses. The court ordered that deadly force be used only in situations where all other means have been exhausted and when necessary to protect life.
The decision came in response to an attack in the Jacarezinho favela in 2021 that left 28 people dead. As happened on Thursday, an officer died during that raid, which some at the time believed was the reason for the ill-treatment and summary executions that followed.
Thursday’s operation began before dawn and ended around 4 p.m. local time, police said. Nearly 400 police officers took part, including Rio’s tactical police unit, backed by four helicopters and 10 armored vehicles, according to the police statement.
In a video shared by Voz da Comunidade, a public news outlet focused on Rio’s favelas, residents can be seen calling for peace and waving white canvases from their windows and roofs.
Fabricio Oliveira, one of the coordinators of the police raid, said authorities feared Friday could be another day of violence in the Complexo do Alemao.
“Our experience has told us that after attacks like these, the police are attacked in every way,” Oliveira said.
____ AP reporter Mauricio Savarese contributed to this report from Sao Paulo.
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