5 days ago

IN DRUG WAR, BRAZILIAN COPS PLAY FOR KEEPS
From beatings to shootings to decapitation, the cops aren’t playing games.

Dateline Rio de Janeiro – The dreaded Red Command drug gang has finally met its match. For decades they’ve terrorized, tortured, kidnapped and murdered the poorest residents of Brazil’s innocent and not-so-innocent. This week Police and Army struck back in the largest such raid in South American history. They used the same sort of terror-inspiring tactics; Red Command's “trademark.” The raid resulted in the death and dismemberment of over 150 gang bangers with over 200 being detained and at least one being decapitated, having his head hung up in a tree. I guess that’s one way to “send a message.”

This is warning apt to be heeded by Red Command since none of these cowardly bastards wants to end up the same way. Motivated by the impending International Climate Summit in Rio, Brazil's government has gone “postal” with Red Command. The current body count is 150 with 200 captured and at least 1 decapitated and put on display. Gangsters were hunted down, bound, dragged into open fields and streets, executed, stripped and displayed in rows. Elements of the Brazilian Army aided in location, identification, tracking down and dropping bombs on the gangsters.

At the battle's peak, armored personnel carriers, Bradley Assault Vehicles, Huey helicopters and heavy-lift drones were used by the Army to turn the tide which, for a short while, was turning against law and order in a pitched gun battle that lasted over 20 minutes.

Police said this raid followed a yearlong investigation into Red Command. Prior police raids have often sparked firefights and gang-operated drones dropping bombs on law enforcement. In this latest raid at least 4 police officers and 1 soldier were killed.

A particularly violent 19-year-old whose gang name was "Esgrimista", meaning "Swordsman" was decapitated after attacking officers with a machete. His brutal assault took the life of a policeman. His distraught mother said they hung her son’s head “from a tree like a trophy.” Raquel Tomas, the 19-year-old’s mother said, “They slit my son’s throat, cut his neck, and hung his head from a tree like a trophy.”

She went on, a mother willing to excuse any evil in the name of family, “They executed my son without giving him a chance to defend himself. [Lie] He was murdered. Everyone deserves a second chance.” This failed mother says, “During any operation, police should do their job, arrest suspects, but not execute them.” His chance to “defend himself” ended when he attacked and killed at least one police officer with his machete. That officer had a mother, a wife, 3 children, 4 brothers and sisters. Where was his "second chance?"

Some of the gangsters’ bodies show signs of torture, such as “burn marks,” and many of the dead having been tied up. Local attorney, Albino Pereira Neto, is representing three of the grieving families. He feels there are grounds for court action but I wouldn’t hold my breath if I was him.

Hundreds of police using helicopters, armored vehicles and armed drones entered the two sprawling ghettos that are home to Red Command, Rio’s oldest criminal gang, exchanging heavy gunfire. One local says, “It was a war zone.”
One local spoke up, having kept his head down as firefights broke out between police and gangsters. He says, “It only ended when the army came in to help with grenade-dropping drones of their own.”

Gangsters had initially responded to the raid with their own drones dropping Molotov Cocktails on police and bystanders. They drew police into a trap where possible escape routes were blocked with abandoned buses and other barricades.

A police spokesman said, “This is how the Rio police are treated by criminals: with bombs dropped by drones.” He continued, “This is the scale of the challenge we face. This is not an ordinary crime, but narco-terrorism.” Rio police said they herded as many known criminals as they could identify into the nearby forest to “protect the population.”

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