Troops and police drive drug gang from Rio shantytown

MORE than 3,000 police and soldiers backed by armoured personnel carriers stormed into Brazil’s biggest slum shortly before dawn yesterday, quickly gaining control of a shantytown ruled for decades by a heavily armed drug gang.

It was the most ambitious operation yet in an effort to increase security before Rio hosts the final matches of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics. Officials are counting on those events to signal Brazil’s arrival as a global economic, political and cultural power.

“We’re taking back this territory for the 100,000 citizens of Rocinha, people who have needed peace,” said Sergio Cabral, governor of Rio de Janeiro state.

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The action in Rocinha is part of a campaign to drive the drug gangs out of the city’s slums, where the traffickers often rule unchallenged. Rio de Janeiro has more than 1,000 shantytowns where about one-third of its six million people live.

Authorities said it took just 90 minutes to seize control of Rocinha. Police simultaneously overran the neighbouring Vidigal slum, also previously dominated by the drug gang known as Friends of Friends.

Both slums sit between two of Rio’s richest neighbourhoods, and Rocinha’s ramshackle homes climb a mountainside covered in Atlantic rain forest. Police methodically cleared alleys and streets on their way up steep, winding roads. Rifle-toting officers from the BOPE police units, made famous by two Elite Squad films, trained their weapons down narrow corridors.

One resident applauded the police invasion. “Tell the world we’re not all drug traffickers! We’re working people and now they’re coming to liberate us,” a man yelled as police rolled by.

Marisa Costa da Silva, 54, who runs a small sweet shop at the base of the slum, was less sure. “Lord knows if there will be war or peace, or even if things will be better if police take this slum,” she said. “We’ve heard they’ve been abusive to slum residents in other places they’ve taken. I have no idea what to expect.”

Rocinha’s location has made it one of the most lucrative and largest drug distribution points in the city.

“Rocinha is one of the most strategically important points for police to control in Rio de Janeiro,” said Paulo Storani, a security consultant and former captain in the BOPE police unit. “The pacification of Rocinha means that authorities have closed a security loop around the areas that will host most of the Olympic and World Cup activities.”

Some estimates say the Friends of Friends gang brings in more than $50 million (£31m) in drug sales annually in Rocinha and Vidigal alone. Much of the drugs are sold to tourists and wealthy Brazilians staying in the posh beach neighbourhoods of Leblon, Ipanema and Copacabana.

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“This action is a huge blow to the structure of drug trafficking in Rio de Janeiro and against the second-largest drug faction,” Mr Storani said.

“Beyond that, it’s essential to have security in this area simply because of the huge number of people who circulate there.”

The head of Rio’s civil police, Marta Rocha, made a special appeal to the “mothers, sisters, grandmothers, aunts” to collaborate with the peacekeeping effort.

The invasion of Rocinha comes near the end of a watershed year in the fight against drug gangs. Rio’s programme of installing permanent “police pacification units” in slums started in 2008.

Police officials openly announced when they planned to invade Rocinha. They have used that tactic before and say it has led to fewer firefights during the incursions, with gang members either fleeing or simply laying down their weapons before police arrive.

In recent days, police set up roadblocks at Rocinha’s entrances to capture the slum’s fleeing drug kingpins.

The effort paid off Thursday, when police captured Antonio Bonfim Lopes, known as “Nem,” who was the most-wanted drug trafficker in Rio. He was found hiding in the boot of a car. His top lieutenants were also captured in recent days.

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