Brazilian police have begun a controversial project to rescue a shanty town from drug-dealing gangs, writes Joshua Partlowfrom Rio de Janeiro
FROM THE school balcony, Marcos Cunha had an unobstructed view of Santa Marta, the Rio de Janeiro district that had been giving his fellow police officers so much trouble.
Looming above him was the rocky peak that police once rappelled down to raid the shanty town. At eye level sat the bullet-pocked Church of the Nazarene, where drug dealers had fired at oncoming police another day. And spread below him were the clustered shacks and tangled wires of this largely ungoverned place on a hillside of the capital.
"They probably thought we were going to leave like usual," Cunha said from the school, which has become the headquarters of Rio's latest experiment in urban policing. "But this time we're staying."
The police have regularly launched large operations in Brazil's favelas in their battle against drug gangs over the years, but authorities say the occupation of Santa Marta, a relatively small, contained neighbourhood, is part of a new approach, a pilot project for crime fighting in this violent city. Brazilian police are attempting counter-insurgency tactics similar to those used by US soldiers in Iraq - setting up small bases occupied around the clock inside violent neighbourhoods, developing intelligence by living among their adversaries, and using government funds to rebuild broken areas and generate goodwill.
"Santa Marta is like a laboratory for policing a conflict area," said Antonio Roberto Ces rio de S, a senior official in the office of the public security secretary of Rio de Janeiro. "The idea is to rescue a territory that until now has belonged to a drug-dealing gang."
But this approach - heavy police presence during peacetime in a major city - has drawn intense criticism from those who say it is an abuse of power and curtails residents' freedom. In this and similar operations in other favelas in Rio, police have banned motorcycle-taxis - a vehicle often used for distributing drugs. Residents say police have broken in doors and roughed people up, shut down neighbourhood dance parties, cut off illegal TV and internet connections, and imposed de facto curfews.
"The problem is that they act in this aggressive way, focusing on the poor areas, as if that's where the real criminals are actually living," said Rafael Dias, an investigator with Justica Global, a human rights organisation. "The people in these neighbourhoods do not have safety now. They have an occupation." These are familiar challenges across Latin America, where underfunded and overtaxed police forces cannot stem the criminality corroding many major cities, particularly those with a thriving drug trade. Corruption in the ranks and distrust among citizens only make law enforcement more difficult.
About 10,000 people live in Santa Marta, a warren of 1,000 to 2,000 shoddy houses threaded with narrow concrete paths and perched on a hillside so steep that many residents ride a tram to get up the slope.
About 50 to 60 drug dealers operate here, residents estimate, and the graffiti of the gang in charge - "CV" for Comando Vermelho, or Red Command - scars walls. Those are modest numbers, given the scale of the sprawling city - an advantage for a police operation that employed just 150 men in the initial push. The small favela also has few entrances and is bordered by jungle, rather than blending into other slums.
"In the other communities, we don't have the manpower to get into the area, expel the drug dealers and keep the police there," S said. "We need to increase the number of police officers. The population of Rio is too big, the favelas are growing too fast."
S estimates that Rio de Janeiro state, which now has 38,000 policemen, needs 10,000 new officers to combat crime in the city and replicate the Santa Marta-style operation in other, larger favelas.