Huge Brazilian raid on Rio gang leaves at least 60 people dead and 81 under arrest

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RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — About 2,500 Brazilian police and soldiers launched a massive raid on a drug-trafficking gang in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday, arresting 81 suspects and sparking shootouts that left at least 60 suspects dead, officials said.

The operation included officers in helicopters and armored vehicles and targeted the notorious Red Command in the sprawling low-income favelas of Complexo de Alemao and Penha, police said.

Rio’s state Gov. Claudio Castro said in a video posted on X that 60 criminal suspects were “neutralized,” 81 arrested and 75 rifles seized during the massive one-day raid that he called the biggest such operation in the city’s history. A large amount of drugs also was seized, the state government said.

An Associated Press journalist also saw the bodies of at least two police officers among 10 bodies brought to the Getulio Vargas hospital in Penha. Police did not immediately confirm the deaths of officers.

An unknown number of people also were wounded.

Footage on social media showed fire and smoke rising from the two favelas as gunfire rang out. The city’s Education Department said 46 schools across the two neighborhoods were closed, and the nearby Federal University of Rio de Janeiro canceled night classes and told people on campus to seek shelter.

Suspected gang members blocked roads in northern and southeastern Rio in response to the raid, local media reported. At least 50 buses were commandeered to be used in the blockades, the city’s bus organization Rio Onibus said.

The operation Tuesday followed a year of investigation into the criminal group, police said.

Castro, from the conservative opposition Liberal party, said the federal government should be providing more support to combat crime — a swipe at the administration of leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Gleisi Hoffmann, the Lula administration’s liaison with the parliament, agreed that coordinated action was needed but pointed to a recent crackdown on money laundering as an example of the federal government’s action on organized crime.

Emerging from Rio’s prisons, the Red Command criminal gang has expanded its control in favelas in recent years.

Rio has been the scene of lethal police raids for decades. In March 2005, some 29 people were killed in Rio’s Baixada Fluminense region, while in May 2021, 28 were killed in the Jacarezinho favela.

While the Tuesday’s police operation was similar to previous ones, its scale was unprecedented, said Luis Flavio Sapori, a sociologist and public safety expert at Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais.

“What’s different about today’s operation is the magnitude of the victims. These are war numbers,” he said.

He argued that these kinds of operations are inefficient because they do not tend to catch the masterminds, but rather target underlings who can later be replaced.

“It’s not enough to go in, exchange gunfire, and leave. There’s a lack of strategy in Rio de Janeiro’s public security policy,” Sapori said. “Some lower-ranking members of these factions are killed, but those individuals are quickly replaced by others.”