This Tuesday, Rio de Janeiro is experiencing a day of colossal chaos and intense shootings by an organized group that is already the deadliest in the history of the Brazilian city. At least 60 people have died (including four officers) and about 80 have been arrested, according to official data. The deployment of 2,500 police officers in this mega-operation, which has initially focused on two large Rio favela neighborhoods, aims to stop the territorial expansion of organized crime in the South American country. The governor of the State of Rio, Claudio Castro, has complained that “Rio is alone in this war”, has criticized the lack of support from the Government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and has asked the Armed Forces for help.
Rio de Janeiro, tourist, former capital and home to six million residents, is simultaneously a very unequal city and accustomed to violence, but the doses deployed this Tuesday are extraordinary even for the locals. The enormous police deployment has been responded to with intense shootings by the men of the Red Command, who have even thrown grenades from drones at the agents. Hours later, the criminal group has deployed its members, who have blocked avenues throughout the city and the metropolitan area.
The authorities have raised the alert level in Rio city and the news has been filled with images of blocked avenues with buses, burned cars and dozens of shirtless men whom the agents take into custody. The police have seized at least 75 rifles.
The main target of the police operation is the head of the Red Command in a Rio neighborhood called Complexo da Penha, capo Edgar Alves de Andrade, nicknamed Doca. The agents, who had a hundred arrest warrants, are also looking for dozens of his lieutenants.
The CV is a criminal group that is dedicated to drug and arms trafficking, among other illicit activities such as illegal transportation, which was born in 1979 in a prison in Rio, and has expanded to other states in recent years. In Brazilian territory, only (the PCC), which is based in São Paulo and is its fiercest rival.
Already early in the morning, the authorities had announced that the shootings between agents and criminals forced 45 schools to be closed and 12 bus lines to be diverted. By the afternoon, the CV had managed to cut off traffic in at least fifteen points in the city, including Brasil Avenue, one of the main road arteries.
To catch the business bosses, the accountants who help them launder their profits and the foot soldiers who maintain absolute control over entire neighborhoods where they dictate the law, the authorities have mobilized an enormous deployment. To the 2,500 military and civil police officers involved, thirty armored vehicles, two helicopters, police drones and a dozen demolition vehicles have been added.
Governor Castro, a Bolsonaro supporter, has complained that the Armed Forces rejected his requests three times to send him armored vehicles for support. He has asked the military for help arguing that this “is a war that has nothing to do with urban security” but is fueled “by the weapons of international drug trafficking.”
The Secretary of Public Security Victor Santos has highlighted that the entire operation was designed and is being carried out with the support of the federal government. Santos regretted the chaos for the neighbors and the injured, but stressed that this action “was necessary, it was planned, it is based on intelligence and it will continue.”
The epicenter of the mega-operation are two huge groups of favelas where almost 300,000 people live, the Complexo da Penha and the Complexo do Alemão. The first is, according to the prosecutor’s office to combat criminal families in Rio, a nerve center for the activities of the Red Command. The Complexo da Penha, says a note from the Special Group to Combat Organized Crime (Gaeco), “is a strategic point for the flow of drugs and weapons, thanks to the fact that it is close to several highways, and has become one of the main bases of the expansionist project of the criminal group.”
One in four Brazilians, that is, 50 million people, live in neighborhoods dominated by organized crime, according to a recent study by the University of Cambridge. The Red Command, the PCC or other armed groups impose their law on their neighbors and, at times, prevent the authorities from taking action. The directly affected neighbors, who tend to be poor, black and peripheral, find themselves trapped between two fires, abandoned by the authorities, easy targets and prey to stray bullets, in addition to .
In recent times, criminals have discovered the benefits of remote work. A prosecutor from the Amazonian state of Rondonia recently explained in the newspaper The Globe that the heads of the Red Command franchises in other states, especially those bordering other countries, are taking refuge in Rio de Janeiro, which until this Tuesday was the group’s main hideout. “They realized that the boss no longer needed to be in his home state. He could be protected in Rio and make decisions by video call,” Anderson Batista de Oliveira, head of Gaeco in Rondonia, explained to the Rio newspaper. “The boss is in a place that is difficult for the police to access, and the organization thus protects its main assets,” he added.
Until now, the most lethal operation in Rio was that of the Jacarezinho favela, in the center, where in 2021 . The Brazilian police are considered one of the police that kills and dies the most in the world. Around 10% of violent deaths are usually the work of uniformed officers. That of Rio, both in the city and in the State, has stood out for years at the national level for its height. The increase has contributed to reducing deaths in shooting confrontations with criminals.
