“The scenario is one of civil war”, say TV Globo reporters live from the north of Rio de Janeiro, where the police carried out a mega operation against the criminal organization Comando Vermelho, this Tuesday, October 28, which has already resulted in at least 64 deaths, of which four were security agents, according to information from the state government. It is the deadliest operation in the city’s history.
Operation Containment, which aims to arrest criminal leaders in Rio de Janeiro and other states and combat the expansion of Comando Vermelho, mobilized around 2,500 agents, who clashed with the alleged criminals. Upon the arrival of the police teams, still in the early hours of the morning in Brazil, the drug traffickers reacted with gunfire – in a published video you can hear around 200 shots in one minute -, barricades and blockades in nerve-racking areas of the city. Later they dropped bombs on the police from drones.
“This is how the Rio de Janeiro police are received by criminals: with bombs dropped by drones. This is the size of the challenge we face. It is no longer a common crime, it is narcoterrorism”, wrote on social media the governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Cláudio Castro.
Hundreds of schools closed, including universities, and dozens of clinics suspended their services. The city’s bus companies, according to G1, stopped counting in the middle of the afternoon how many buses diverted their route due to the operation. “The city is under siege, everyone is afraid”, summarized a taxi driver interviewed by the Brazilian press.
The Brazilian newspaper O Globo reported that among those detained is Edgard Alves de Andrade, known as Doca, one of the main leaders of Comando Vermelho. Another of the leaders, Thiago Nascimento Mendes, known as Belão, was later arrested, as well as Nicolas Soares, considered the group’s financial operator.
The action of the civil and military police, which has the support of the Public Ministry, has however generated a political war of versions. Governor Cláudio Castro, from PL, Jair Bolsonaro’s party, accused the federal government of not wanting to help with the operation: “we had requests denied three times, each day for a reason”. The Ministry of Justice and Public Security of the Lula da Silva government says it responded to “all 11 requests for renewal of support from the National Force”.
“210 arrests were made, 10 tons of drugs and 190 firearms were seized this year, numbers that reflect the efforts of the Federal Police in combating organized crime,” the ministry said in a statement.
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