Violence rises in Rio’s poor communities
Shootings double during first week of Olympics
When photographer Carlos Coutinho saw a bright light entering one of Rio’s low-income communities known as fa
velas last Thursday, he recognized it immediately as belonging to an armored law enforcement vehicle typically used for special operations in Rio’s poor neighborhoods.
Then came the gunshots. From his office at a travel agency, he watched residents scramble for cover. The next morning, he learned that three people, including two teenagers, were killed in the firefight.
He saw employees from the city trash pickup service.
“They started to throw water in the area, and the blood began to run,” Coutinho said. “Then I took the picture.”
His haunting image of a wide, red stream flowing down an alleyway was posted to a favela citizen journalism site and quickly went viral, garnering 4,500 shares on social media.
While such violence is all too familiar in Rio, the photo struck a nerve with locals who complain that violence has peaked in their communities even as 100,000 security personnel have been brought to Rio to patrol the Olympic Games.
Reported shootings in the first week of the Olympics were more than double the tally of the previous week, according to a new phone app developed by Amnesty International that gathers reports of gun violence. The program registered 59 shootings and 14 shooting deaths in greater Rio, compared with an average of 3.5 shootings a day for all of July.
That violence only continued in the second week of the Games, with a 48-year-old woman being shot on the streets Monday during an anti-drug operation run by security forces.
As the killings have piled up, the eyes of the world have been focused instead on muggings and petty thefts of foreign delegations around Olympic venues and tourist hot spots. That included a group of four U.S. swimmers who said they were robbed at gunpoint early Sunday morning. That sharp divide led public security analyst Daniel Mack to compare Rio’s Olympic venues to the Green Zone in Baghdad.
Richard Ford, a retired FBI agent who runs a private security firm in Brazil, says the contrast in violence is not surprising, considering the warring gangs that constantly fight for control of the
favelas are tapped into the city’s notoriously corrupt police forces.
“They know where the police are at. They probably have better information than some of the police,” Ford said. “If they see an opportunity, they take it. And unfortunately you’ve got the local residents caught in the crossfire.”
During the 2014 World Cup, a 21-year-old soldier from Sao Paulo brought in ahead of the soccer tournament was killed. His mother, Michele Mikami, said the agony she endured came rushing back last week when a soldier from an Amazonian state brought in to work the Olympics was shot and killed. That prompted messages of condolences from the president and the justice minister, as well as two separate police raids that left at least four people dead.
“Yet another family watches their loved one pay the price with his own life for a corrupt public security system that doesn’t work,” Mikami said. “Nobody defends us. Our family members are sent to the butcher block every day.”
For residents of the Complexo do Alemao favela, the violence they’re seeing is familiar.
The similarities go back even farther, to 2007, when Rio hosted the Pan American Games. One bout of violence was so severe residents refer to it simply as The Pandemonium. At least 19 people were killed in a large-scale police operation after the murders of two police officers.
“What I’m struck by is by how much history rhymes in Rio,” said Robert Muggah, a security specialist at Instituto Igarape, a Brazilian research organization. “With each major mega event we’ve had, going back to the early ’90s with the (Earth Summit), we’ve seen this kind of scenario play out.”
Brazil instituted a controversial program in 2008 called Pacifying Police Units, known as UPPs. Similar in theory to counterinsurgency strategies employed by coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, UPPs are 24-hour police patrols that spend more time inside of favelas and focus on addressing locals’ security needs rather than quick-hit operations targeting drug sales.
While the program rode an initial wave of popularity across Rio, recent years have seen a rise in violence, corruption schemes and deaths of suspects, law enforcement and residents caught in between.
Alan Brum, head of a cultural and educational NGO in Complexo do Alemao, said that during the 2014 World Cup there was some ability for police commanders to maintain a level of order in their target areas. But he said the two years since had shown a rapid disintegration of the program. He said each shift of police acted on its own, making it harder to maintain connections with local citizens and making it easier for officers to engage in corruption.
Now, with the Games about to end, residents worry that the minimal progress made under the UPP program will also come to an end.
Federal and state governments are facing a crippling recession that has cut into security budgets.
Favela residents see that economic difficulty and assume that spells the end of the heavy investments needed to sustain the pacification units.
Mariluce Souza, an artist and tour guide from Complexo do Alemao, predicts police will abandon posts in favelas soon after the Games and the project will gradually shut down.
“I would like for everything to happen peacefully, for the UPP to come and say, ‘Hey, I’m leaving. Bye-bye, kisses!’ And we throw flowers for them. ‘ God bless you! Long life!’ ” she said. “But it’s not going to be that way.”
“With each major mega event we’ve had, going back to the early ’90s with the (Earth Summit), we’ve seen this kind of scenario play out.” Robert Muggah, security specialist