By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, January 6, 2009 5:45 AM

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan. 5 -- From the school balcony, Marcos Cunha had an unobstructed view of Santa Marta, the Rio de Janeiro neighborhood that had been giving his fellow police officers so much trouble.

Looming above him was the rocky peak that police once rappelled down to raid the shantytown. At eye level sat the bullet-pocked Church of the Nazarene, where drug dealers had fired at oncoming police on another day. And spread below him were the clustered shacks and tangled wires of this largely ungoverned place on a hillside of the city.

"They probably thought we were going to leave like usual," Cunha said from the school, which has become the headquarters of Rio's latest experiment in urban policing. "But this time we're staying."

The police have regularly launched large operations in Brazil's favelas, or slums, in their battle against drug gangs over the years, but authorities say the occupation of Santa Marta, a relatively small, contained neighborhood, is part of a new approach, a pilot project for the future of crime fighting in this violent city. Brazilian police officers are attempting counterinsurgency tactics similar to those used by U.S. soldiers in Iraq -- setting up small bases occupied around the clock inside violent neighborhoods, developing intelligence by living among their adversaries, and using government funds to rebuild broken areas and generate goodwill.

"Santa Marta is like a laboratory for policing a conflict area," said Antônio Roberto Cesário de Sá, a senior official in the office of the public security secretary of Rio de Janeiro. "The idea is to rescue a territory that until now has belonged to a drug-dealing gang."

But this approach -- heavy police presence during peacetime in a major city -- has drawn intense criticism from those who say it is an abuse of power and curtails residents' freedom. In this and similar operations in other favelas in Rio, police have banned motorcycle-taxis -- a vehicle often used for distributing drugs. Residents say police have broken in doors and roughed people up, shut down neighborhood dance parties, cut off illegal TV and Internet connections, and imposed de facto curfews.

"The problem is that they act in this aggressive way, focusing on the poor areas, as if that's where the real criminals are actually living," said Rafael Dias, an investigator with Justiça Global, a human rights organization in Brazil. "The people in these neighborhoods do not have safety now. They have an occupation."

These are familiar challenges across Latin America, where underfunded and overtaxed police forces cannot stem the criminality corroding many major cities, particularly those with a thriving drug trade. Problems of corruption in the ranks and distrust among citizens only make law enforcement more difficult in this region.

About 10,000 people live in Santa Marta, a warren of 1,000 to 2,000 shoddy houses threaded with narrow concrete paths and perched on a hillside so steep that many residents ride a tram to get up the slope. About 50 to 60 drug dealers operate here, residents estimate, and the graffiti of the gang in charge -- "CV" for Comando Vermelho, or Red Command -- scar walls. Those are modest numbers, given the scope of the sprawling city -- an advantage for a police operation that employed just 150 men in the initial push. The small favela also has few entrances and is bordered by jungle, rather than blending into other slums.

"In the other communities, we don't have the manpower to get into the area, expel the drug dealers and keep the police there," Sá said. "We need to increase the number of police officers. The population of Rio is too big, the favelas are growing too fast."

Sá estimated that Rio de Janeiro state, which now has 38,000 policemen, needs 10,000 new officers to effectively combat crime in the city and replicate the Santa Marta-style operation in other, larger favelas. But whether that is a model that deserves replication remains in dispute.

Across town in City of God, a favela made famous by the 2002 movie of the same name, another large-scale police operation is underway, and the mood seems mostly grim. The streets are quieter than usual, and some of the stores along a fetid canal inside the neighborhood have shut down for lack of customers. Firecrackers break the quiet, set off to warn of approaching police patrols. Police stand on corners once reserved for the drug trade, and residents eye them warily.

"The police have to do their work, but they can't stop our lives like this," said Cleber Pinto da Silva, 31, one of the unlicensed motorcycle-taxi drivers whom police barred from working, as he stood on the sidewalk near a police position. "Do they want us to become criminals? Do they not want us to work? The only thing they haven't done yet is beat us."

Nata Maravilha Nael, 48, a school security guard who grew up in City of God, said even the residents who want the officers in the neighborhood describe such police excesses as speeding through the narrow streets in armored vehicles, screaming at residents and demanding bribes.

"It's an abuse of power," he said. "They're like criminals themselves."

The police have shut down popular dance parties, and several residents said they do not feel comfortable being outside after dark anymore, because of the risk of being accused of criminal activity.

"It's going backward. They're acting aggressively against normal people," Nael said. "When the criminals were here, they didn't mess with normal people."

But others in the favela said anything is preferable to open-air cocaine markets, with young men blithely carrying automatic weapons, the violent struggles between rival gangs and militias, the shootouts.

"The conflict that was happening is not happening anymore," said Angelo Santos, a 36-year-old post office manager. "You don't need to come home from work now and see people carrying guns all the time."

Police report a decline in murders, robberies and other crimes in City of God and Santa Marta since the operations began. But many residents say they believe the respite is temporary or has simply encouraged gang members to take their operations to neighborhoods under less vigilance.

"This neighborhood is under the Red Command -- they protect people here so other factions don't come in. But they all left. They went over there," said Robson Augusto Barreto, a resident of Santa Marta, pointing across the city to another slum by a cemetery visible in the distance.

Barreto, 44, was lifting sacks of cement alongside several other construction workers employed by the state government to build some 50 sturdy houses to replace the decrepit wood shacks. "I think things are better now. People are feeling safer after the police occupation," he said.

The paths snaking among the houses were nearly deserted on a recent afternoon, unusual in such a densely packed community. As the search continues in the neighborhood and surrounding jungle for stashes of drugs or weapons, police regularly question residents about their activities. The neighbors don't like being outside for fear of getting hassled, said Alan Basilio, 27, a student on his way home.

"At this time of day, you'd normally see many more people outside, sitting around and talking," he said. "Daily life has changed a lot."

"Of course, since the police arrived there are no more gunfights, no more shooting," he said. "But the way it was before, we had freedom to go where we wanted, to do what we wanted, for as long as we wanted. I'm not sure how long it's going to be like this, but it seems like it could be a very long time."