Rio police try softly softly approach

• Police in one of Rio's Copacabana slums

But the unexpected happened. Eduardo da Silva, the police instructor, won him over with humour and a handshake. "I began to realise that the policeman in front of me was just a human being, and not the monster I had imagined in my head," Mr Bento, 22, said.

Years of hate and mistrust are finally thawing in some of Rio's most violent slums. Pushed to alleviate security concerns before the city's double-billing on the international stage - the 2014 football World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games - Rio officials have embarked on an ambitious plan to wrest control of the slums, or favelas, from ruthless drug gangs who have ruled the areas for years.

The peace officers are central to that effort, flooding in after the military police clear the streets in gun battles that can last for weeks. Their job is part traditional policing, part social work. They devote themselves to winning over residents scarred by decades of violence - some at the hands of the police.

For decades, City of God - immortalised in a 2002 film - was one of Rio's most fearsome neighbourhoods; so dangerous that even the police rarely dared to enter.

Those days seem long gone. Drug dealing remains but the men with the big guns are gone.

Children now play outside without fear of being hit by stray bullets; football matches, formerly violent affairs, have become more civil, with officers sometimes joining in the games.

But almost two years after the new police units first arrived, many residents in the community of 120,000 people still struggle to accept that the 315 police officers working 12-hour shifts around them are no longer the enemy. Others worry that the police force - formally called "police pacification units" - will leave once the Olympics end.

"Nobody likes us here," Officer Luis Pizarro said during a recent night patrol. "It can be frustrating sometimes."

For decades, government officials refused to take responsibility for the slums, and as drug gangs built caches of weapons it became more difficult for the police to enter without a firefight. Residents resented the police for abandoning them, and reviled them for the brutality that marked their bloody raids.

Without a daily police presence, city services suffered, and doctors and other professionals began to shun the slums for safety reasons.Drug gang leaders became judge and jury.

"People did not have the courage" to retake the slums, said Jose Mariano Beltrame, who took over as Rio's secretary of public security in 2007.

"People preferred to throw the dust under the carpet to avoid facing the problem."

The favelas have rarely surrendered without a fight - at least eight people died in City of God in 2008 in the initial raids by the police. Such battles are expected to become more widespread as the police move into new neighbourhoods.

So far, they have installed 12 pacification units, covering 35 communities. But Mr Beltrame plans to establish units in 160 communities by 2014, including in favelas such as Rocinha and Complexo do Alemao, which are larger than City of God.

On a recent Sunday night, a few dozen young men walked freely in Rocinha with rifles and machine guns. One carried a small rocket launcher.

Mr Beltrame said his main goal was to rid the streets of "weapons of war," not necessarily to end drug dealing. He said he is also working to diminish the police corruption that added to the violence. Many of the peace officers are purposely recruited directly out of the police academy, before they are tempted to accept drug money to supplement relatively low wages.

Captain Jose Luiz de Medeiros, who leads the police unit in City of God, said he was building a force for the long term, and working hard to win the residents' trust. About a dozen officers recently visited a new day care centre, spinning dummies around their fingers while children played with their radios and clambered around their legs and holstered guns.

Some of the officers have been pulled off patrol duty to teach guitar and piano classes and English. Eduardo da Silva, the karate instructor, is one of those who now teaches full-time.

Mr Bento, who joined the class after his brother died, said he had considered going into drug trafficking to gain access to guns. But since meeting Mr da Silva, he has changed his mind and now tries to help other residents conquer their fear of the police.