Courting goodwill in Rio's mean streets

Community policing offered in slums as an alternative to tough security forces

RIO DE JANEIRO -- The residents of Santa Marta, one of this violent city's many hillside slums, had never seen someone quite like the new police captain, a woman who strolled its maze of passageways to shake hands and ask residents what services the government might deliver.

They had also not seen officers quite like the ones she commanded. Instead of wearing riot gear, they had on soft blue berets, and instead of storming Santa Marta with guns blazing, a scene common to Rio's shantytowns, they came to generate goodwill with residents normally fearful of police.

The recent arrival of Capt. Pricilla de Oliveira Azevedo and her officers was part of a new community policing strategy that officials in Rio hope will curtail the kind of violence that erupted this month. Street gangs shot down a police helicopter, killing three officers, and gunfights in the streets left more than 30 dead.

The mayhem shook the city and raised concerns about whether the government is prepared to tame bustling shantytowns ahead of the 2016 Olympics, which Rio recently won after defeating Chicago and two other cities. Though capturing the Olympics was a personal victory for President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, authorities here were mortified when the violence in this picturesque seaside city was televised worldwide.

The tough police tactics that Rio's security forces have long used -- complete with assault rifles, armored personnel carriers and helicopters -- have by no means ended in the city's favelas, as the slums are known.

But Azevedo said that in Santa Marta and in a handful of other once-violent districts, the strategy is to replace the militarized police with patrol officers. She said officers permanently deployed in the favelas would be better positioned to develop intelligence from residents about drug trafficking and to help government authorities determine where new state funds are needed to build homes and provide social programs.

"For a long time this community was abandoned," said Azevedo, 31, who has served in some of the city's toughest districts. "It is difficult to be able to change a 50-year situation in one year, but our intention is to change the minds of people and their impression of the police."

The task will not be easy. Favelas have multiplied from a few hundred a decade ago to more than 1,000. Many spread across steep hillsides, their narrow, concrete passageways leading to tiny cinder-block homes built haphazardly, one above the other. Two million to 3 million of Rio de Janeiro state's 14 million people live in the slums, and most of the country's 5,717 homicides last year took place there.

Life in the favelas has always been hard, but as the slums have grown, and the gangs have grown more violent, the police over the years began to slowly withdraw. Gangs such as the Pure Third Command and the Red Command were left in control, with the Brazilian state virtually absent.

The police would still go into the favelas, residents said, but only to engage traffickers in gun battles like the one that proceeded the helicopter's downing. The police say the gangs are heavily armed, not just with assault rifles but also with rocket launchers and grenades.

"They always arrives at the time when kids are going to school and people are going to work," Daniela Barreto, 27, who lives in a favela called Rocinha. "It's horrible. People start running and panicking."

An Italian-born director of a school in Rocinha said children play-act what they see in the streets, favoring the gangsters who live in their midst. "They play policeman and narcotics dealer, but no one wants to be the policeman," said Barbara Olivi.