By Monte Reel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, March 28, 2007

RIO DE JANEIRO -- A decorated police officer was sitting behind the wheel of his Toyota pickup truck here last month when a group of men surrounded the vehicle and pumped more than 40 bullets into him.

Such execution-style killings are not unusual in a city where police and gang members routinely battle for turf in the shantytowns, but this one sent ripples through Rio. The slain officer, Felix dos Santos Tostes, had been moonlighting as the leader of a militia unit -- one of the well-armed groups that have multiplied throughout the city's slums in recent months, complicating an urban conflict that has defied solution for decades.

The militias have wrested control of nearly 100 of this city's 600 slums, or favelas, from the drug gangs that have long held sway, according to police and nongovernmental organizations. Tostes's murder showed why the shift worries so many people here: Although the militias profess to make the neighborhoods safe, violence is following them. And the deep connections some of the groups maintain to police and political circles make monitoring and controlling them extraordinarily difficult.

Law enforcement and government officials have traditionally advocated a hard-line stance against the easily vilified drug gangs, but Rio's new governor, Sergio Cabral, is urging his colleagues to reject the notion that the militias are the lesser of two evils. He has compared the recent rise of the militias to the situation in Colombia, where the involvement of paramilitary fighters has further muddied that country's long-running battle against Marxist guerrillas. Cabral visited Bogota this week to discuss methods of controlling violence with his Colombian counterparts.

"The government says the militias should be investigated, but the situation is almost comical," said Rodrigo Pimentel, a former military police officer who is now a security consultant. "A lot of people inside the police intelligence units in charge of investigating them are involved with the militias themselves. That's why when the police give the government a list of suspected militia members that should have 700 names on it, there are only 40 or 50."

The militia groups controlling the various neighborhoods are not affiliated with one another. Some were started by residents of the favelas themselves, but many are led by off-duty or retired police officers, firemen and private security workers.

Tostes's name showed up on a list of suspected militia members earlier this year, not long after he had been showered with honors for his work as an aide to Rio's civil police chief, who was replaced when Cabral took office in January. Tostes's murder was an inside job, according to residents of the favela, the result of a power struggle within a militia. Police are investigating the possibility that one of the rival militia leaders who ordered the killing was a regional legislator.

"The political influence that the militias have been building as they have expanded is one of the things that worries us a lot," said Raquel Willadino, director of violence-related issues and human rights for the Favela Observatory, a Rio-based nongovernmental organization.

In Rio das Pedras, residents remember Tostes as something of a folk hero who made their neighborhood safe. The residents were in the habit of throwing a samba party in the main square on Sundays, and a prominent seat was always saved for Tostes. Since his death, no new militia leader has emerged there, but the group continues to enforce a strict brand of public discipline designed to scare off any hint of drug gangs.

The militia's presence is sometimes subtle, sometimes not. On a recent Saturday night, a fight broke out in a restaurant on the main street leading into the favela, said waitress Khedhulya Daiane. Before she knew it, Daiane said, militia members had materialized, seemingly from nowhere, to break it up and punish the instigators. She described the militia members as the shadowy but ever-present eyes and ears of the favela.

"They're tough," she said. "If they know someone is using drugs, they'll beat you, if they don't kill you." She raised her eyebrows and nodded slowly. "It's true."

The Rio das Pedras militia, one of the oldest in the city, was formed in the late 1980s when neighbors banded together to kick out a group of local drug dealers. As the militia evolved, off-duty and retired police officers began taking over its leadership positions. Some residents say that today the militia helps to fill the gap left by the government's inattention to the neighborhood's social needs. For example, its leaders appoint independent mediators to sort out legal disputes among residents who lack ready access to the country's legal system, they said.

Allan Turnowski, the state director of special police operations, said the militias recruit members from a police corps that pays low-tier troopers about $450 a month. Many Brazilians assume the police forces are corrupt, he said, which lowers officers' morale and makes them vulnerable to recruiters.

"Imagine it: A police officer who works for the state never gets any respect, and suddenly he joins a militia and he's worshiped as the man who brings peace to the community," said Turnowski, who described the militias as dangerous substitutes for the state resources chronically lacking in the city's poor communities.

Leonardo Pontes, a hotel security guard in a Rio tourist district, sat at a red plastic table outside a restaurant in Rio das Pedras last week, sipping a bottle of beer. He said residents pay the militia about $14 a month for an illegal cable television connection, whether they want it or not, and in return get a neighborhood free of drug gangs. He said he thinks it's a good bargain.

"Of all the favelas in the city, this one is considered the best," said Pontes, 29. "The gangs don't even try to come in here anymore."

But official statistics do not support the idea that violence disappears when the militias take over. Ana Paula Miranda, a researcher with the government-sponsored Institute of Public Security, recently conducted a statistical study of several favelas known to be controlled by militias. That study, commissioned by the O Globo newspaper, determined that the rates of violent crime in those areas were similar to the rates in favelas run by drug gangs, she said.

A scan of the daily newspapers seems to back up that finding. Last week, for example, local newspapers reported that militia members in the favela of Vargem Grande were suspected of killing a real estate agent there. The killing was believed to have been connected to the militia's effort to control land sales in the neighborhood, according to the reports.

As such stories circulate, some community leaders have become reluctant to welcome militias. Angelo Marcio da Silva, 36, is a social activist who lives in Jardim America, a cluster of seven favelas all ruled by drug gangs. Infighting has weakened the gangs recently, and the militias have tried to pounce. Last month, one militia group tried to take over the area but was defeated by the Red Command, the controlling gang in his neighborhood.

Marcio da Silva takes an unexcited view of the militia phenomenon, calling it just the latest evolution in a conflict caused by chronic governmental neglect. In 10 years, he predicted, the militias, the gangs and the police will split and transform into new factions, but the residents will still be saddled with the same sense of insecurity.

"You can't choose a side," he said. "Because if you do that, you'll either be one of them or you'll be the next victim."