After years of gang rule,police bring uneasy peace

By ALEXEI BARRIONUOVO RIO DE JANEIRO LEONARDO BENTO LONGED for vengeance after a policeman killed his brother five years ago. So when he heard that the new “peace police” force in the City of God slum was offering free karate classes, Mr. Bento signed up, hoping he would at least get to beat up the karate instructor.

But the police instructor, Eduardo da Silva, won him over. “I began to realize that the policeman in front of me was just a human being and not the monster I had imagined in my head,” said Mr. Bento, 22. Years of hate and mistrust are thawing in some of Rio’s most violent slums. Pushed to alleviate security concerns before the city hosts the 2014 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 ruled for years with big guns and abject terror.





The peace officers are central to that effort, moving in after the military police clear the streets in gun battles that can last weeks. They devote themselves to winning over residents scarred by decades of violence - some at the hands of the police.

And the information they receive, officers say, helps them keep the relative peace. For decades, City of God - whose brutal past was immortalized in a 2002 film ? was so dangerous that even the police rarely dared to enter. Those days seem long gone. And life is returning to the streets.


Brazil is clearing Rio
neighborhoods of drug gangs before the 2014 World Cup and the
’16 Olympics. Peace officers, top, in City of God.


But many of the 120,000 residents still struggle to accept that the 315 police officers in their midst are no longer the enemy. Others worry that the police force will leave once the Olympics end. “Nobody likes us here,” Officer Luis Pizarro said during a recent night patrol. “It can be frustrating .”

On a recent evening, officers patrolled along a narrow river choked with garbage and reeking of human and animal waste. Families gathered around makeshift fires. Women danced the samba as men drank cachaca, the Brazilian sugarcane liquor. Almost no one greeted the officers, who walked through an alleyway littered with multicolored paper used to package crack and cocaine. “There goes the Elite Squad,” said one man from a doorway, chuckling as the officers passed by. The hostility is not hard to understand.

For decades, the government refused to take responsibility for the slums, and as drug gangs built caches of weapons it became harder 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.

City services suffered, and doctors and other professionals began to shun the slums. “People did not have the courage” to retake the slums, said Jose Mariano Beltrame, Rio’s secretary of public security. “People preferred to throw the dust under the carpet to avoid facing the problem.” 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 neighborhoods.

So far, they have installed 12 pacification units, covering 35 communities. But Mr. Beltrame plans to establish units in 160 communities by 2014. 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.

Many gang leaders from slums where the police have taken over are fleeing to a nearby slum, the police said. Mr. Beltrame called it a “complex operation.” He said he could not guarantee that people would not die. Even so, Dilma Rousseff, the leading candidate to be Brazil’s next president, has proposed expanding the model to other cities. Millions of dollars in donations from companies like Coca- Cola and a billionaire businessman, Eike Batista, are also pouring in.

Mr. Beltrame said his main goal was to rid the streets of “weapons of war,” not necessarily to end drug dealing. He is also working, he said, to diminish police corruption. In City of God, drug gang leaders have fled or have been arrested or killed. Some residents say they feel caught between the police and the gangs.

“I am scared even to say ‘good afternoon’ to the police here,” said Beatriz Soares, who fears that drug traffickers might be watching. But her family fears the police as well. When an officer came to her door one day, she said her 3-year-old son “asked him if he was going to kill him.” Still, it is clear that the police presence has changed lives for the better throughout City of God.

School attendance has increased. Earth-moving trucks are dredging the sewage-filled river, and garbage trucks pass through three times a week. The police have also made more than 200 arrests since they retook City of God, and crime has fallen: 6 homicides last year compared with 34 in 2008. Residents are mainly grateful, though some say something intangible has been lost, a certain free-spiritedness.

In the past, gang members often subsidized drug-fueled parties to recruit dealers. The police are now strictly controlling the dances ? limiting alcohol consumption among minors and censoring misogynistic lyrics that glorify drug gangs. Some officers have been pulled off patrol duty to teach English and give music lessons. Officer da Silva said he understood the people’s wariness.

“It is impossible for them to forget their past,” he said. “All I can do is make sure I am open to them.” To make his point, he comes to City of God unarmed and without a bulletproof vest. “Force does not bring about peace,” he said. “It can instill respect, but not trust.”