Brazilian Police Occupy Lawless Rio Slum

By PAULO PRADA

SÃO PAULO—Police in Rio de Janeiro early Sunday occupied its biggest slum in a carefully orchestrated predawn raid hailed as the culmination of a recent crackdown by local authorities over lawless, long-neglected parts of the city.

Using tanks, helicopters and almost 3,000 heavily armed police officers, authorities entered Rocinha and two other nearby shanties that together remained a symbolic holdout against a drive by the state government to stabilize neighborhoods controlled by criminals. By installing "police pacification units" to patrol Rio's many favelas, as its slums are known, the government has successfully caused drug traffickers to cede control of areas where they once brazenly operated.

Though Rio remains a chaotic juxtaposition of neighborhoods showcasing Brazil's wide socioeconomic divide, the effort has gradually increased hopes that the city, after decades of disrepair, will have crime under control in time for the 2014 soccer World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Sunday's long-expected raid, which follows the arrest last week of a Rocinha kingpin who dominated the city's drug trade, was accomplished without any gunfire, unlike the occupation one year ago of another big concentration of favelas in northern Rio during which dozens were killed in shootouts. Police said they faced little resistance except for a few oil slicks and roadblocks left on the steep climb into the area by fleeing criminals.

The crackdown in recent years has prompted most gangs and their leaders to relocate to areas with less scrutiny. The arrest of the alleged trafficker this week, hiding in the trunk of a car that was trying to flee ahead of the raid, differs from the past, when police forays were met with gunfire. Because 

Rocinha has long been in authorities' sights, "those who would've offered any resistance left a long time ago," wrote Luiz Eduardo Soares, a noted security expert, on his Twitter feed.

Still, José Mariano Beltrame, Rio's top security official and one of the architects of the ongoing effort, hailed the raid as a "liberation" of the slum's residents from "a parallel empire." Police, he said, remain wary of any pockets of resistance and in the coming weeks will continue to sweep the area for weapons, vehicles and other tools of the drug trade in addition to dozens of rifles and motorcycles already seized.

A dense hilltop sprawl overlooking the upscale, seaside neighborhoods in Rio's south, Rocinha is home to nearly 100,000 people. For years the favela, with its labyrinthine streets and abutment with a nearby forest, has been an unruly center of the drug trade in Brazil's second-biggest city after São Paulo. Frequently, it was the scene of bloody battles between rival gangs fighting for control of the lucrative business. 

Police last week said Antônio Bonfim Lopes, the drug lord known as Nem who was arrested in the runup to the incursion, ran an organization with sales of as much as $57 million each year. Images of his three-story hillside home and that of other alleged drug traffickers—with swimming pools, hot tubs and high-tech entertainment and kitchen gear—showed islands of luxury amid the crowded, bare-brick dwellings that dominate the neighborhood.

In preparation for the raid, police had set up a mobile hospital at the foot of the hill leading into the slum. Helicopters dropped leaflets telling residents that their neighborhood was being "pacified" and listing hotlines at which they could leave anonymous tips about criminals, their hideouts, or remaining gang activity. 

By mid-afternoon Sunday, police had raised the Brazil and Rio state flags over the three favelas, scores of applauding neighbors gathered around them. As with most previous favela incursions, police have been aided by the eagerness of most residents for order to replace the anarchy that long ruled in their neighborhoods. The Rocinha raid marked the 19th pacification unit to have been set up in Rio so far.