Around twenty five individuals died during a faceoff between alleged drug traffickers and law enforcement agencies in the Brazilian metropolis, Rio de Janeiro a few days ago. The law enforcement officials say that this attack is amongst the state’s deadliest police raids.
Ones affected in the raid in the impoverished Jacarezinho area attempted to flee via roofs as cops arrived in armored personnel carriers and choppers soared above, according to tv footage. People were compelled to take refuge in their houses as a result of the conflict.
According to investigators, one of several fatalities was a law enforcement officer, and the others were alleged associates of the narcotic crew that controlled activity in the neighborhood, as well as several of its leadership.
This was among the most violent single police operations in Rio state in at least 16 long years. Rio is a state, which has historically been plagued by drug-related crime in its various neighborhoods for generations.
Human rights activists and groups, particularly Amnesty International, condemned the police for what they called an unjustifiable and reprehensible loss of human life in an area mostly dominated by Black and impoverished communities.
Jurema Werneck who is Amnesty International’s executive director for Brazil, says that the number of persons murdered in this security operation is horrific, along with the fact that this slaughtering actually occurred in one of the favelas, an informal area with limited public amenities.
29 individuals were slain in an operation in the Baixada Fluminense, Rio’s dangerous northernmost edges, in 2005.
While talking to Reuters, Ronaldo Oliveira, the police chief, termed it as one of the biggest death tolls in Rio’s history, which has left behind the deadly Complexo do Ameao slum operation that previously engulfed 19 lives in 2007.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) stated that attorneys in Rio get a constitutional mandate to supervise the law enforcement and conduct criminal investigations into police brutality. It demanded an extensive and impartial probe into the fatalities.
According to Human Rights Watch, Rio’s police murdered a whopping 453 individuals and at least 4 cops during just the first 3 months of the current year, despite a ruling from the country’s Supreme Court forbidding operations in such neighborhoods in the COVID-19 outbreak except in “totally extraordinary situations.”
According to police, apart from to drug smuggling, the group stole freight trucks and halted passenger trains to loot from commuters during heists and hijacking instances.
To reinforce their narrative, the police was also seen putting a whole arsenal of detained weaponry from the alleged drug cartel during a press talk. The weapons included around 6 assault rifles, a machine gun, 15 handguns, 14 grenades and artillery rounds.
