Lola Dunton-Milenkovic
On 28 October, 132 people, including four police officers, were killed in a deadly police raid in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro. Allegedly organised to arrest members of the country’s Red Command criminal group, the raid is the deadliest in Brazilian history, where for decades authorities have struggled to contain the gangs that control many of the poorest neighbourhoods.
The raid has sparked conversation on the effectiveness of state violence when dealing with crime, and has seen disagreement, particularly between Rio’s right-wing Governor Cláudio Castro and Brazil’s left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Many support the operation, hailing it as a success in tackling organised crime; others, including Amnesty International, condemn it as a “massacre” committed against mainly Black and impoverished people by a state which has turned “its security policy into a policy of death”, and demand an independent investigation.
What happened?
Early last Tuesday, Rio state police launched a major assault on two of Rio’s largest clusters of favelas, the Complexo do Alemão and the Complexo da Penha, to execute 180 arrest warrants and 100 detention orders. According to Governor Castro, it was intended to be “the largest operation by security forces” in the country.
When police arrived, intense gun battles erupted, resulting in a shoot-out which lasted 15 hours. Residents described the scenes as “war-like” with gunfire erupting from both officers and armed men. Authorities also claim that gang members burned cars in the middle of roads to create barricades, and the police state that gang members used drones to drop explosives on officers as they spread through the neighbourhoods. Castro stated: “This is how the Rio police are treated by criminals: with bombs dropped by drones. This is the scale of the challenge we face. This is not ordinary crime, but narco-terrorism”.
The raid saw 2,500 security forces deployed across an area of nine million square meters, equivalent to 72 Maracanã football stadiums, a venue which was initially designed to hold 200,000 standing spectators. Official reports show that weapons and drugs were seized, and at least 81 arrests took place.
However, figures also show that the police only apprehended 20 of the 100 people whose arrest warrants had initially precipitated the operation. Alongside the arrests, there was also an unprecedentedly high number of deaths: 132 people were killed, including four police officers.
The death toll, published by the public defender’s office, is more than double the figure initially cited after the police operation, when only 58 people were declared dead. The new death toll was made public after grieving residents laid dozens of bodies in a square in Penha the following day. They were placed alongside each other in a long line to show the bloody nature of the raid, and according to Brazilian media, there were estimates from anywhere between at least 50 to more than 70 bodies.
What is the Red Command?
Comando Vermelho, or the Red Command, is Brazil’s oldest criminal group. It was created in the 1970s in the Candido Mendes prison on Ilha Grande island as a form of self-protection group for prisoners, emerging from an alliance between common criminals and leftist militants when the two groups were thrown into prison together under Brazil’s military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985. The prison had terrible conditions, forcing inmates to band together to survive within the system.
By 1979, the group had spread outside of the prison and onto Rio’s streets. Though it started operating with low-level crimes like muggings and bank robberies, in the 1980s it moved into the cocaine trade, cooperating with Colombian drug cartels and taking on leadership roles in Rio’s marginalised neighbourhoods.
It has since grown into a sizable national and transnational threat as it maintains its power base in the poor neighbourhoods of Rio, but also has major influence in prisons across the country, as well as a foothold in Bolivia where it sources much of its cocaine. The Red Command is organised according to a loose leadership structure, often described as a network of independent actors rather than a hierarchy with a single top leader. As such it resembles a franchise with local divisions and separated networks that work together as allies. Since 2020, it has faced repeated incursions and massacres by state forces and militia groups in the Rio favelas under its control.
What has the public reaction been?
There has been widespread support for the carnage, above all from Rio’s right-wing Castro, who hailed the operation as a severe blow to the Red Command. He further stated that the only victims were the four slain police officers, praising them for having “confronted organised crime” on such “a historic day”. The state government also declared the operation was “legal and necessary”, and a “success”. Police authorities concur, viewing the operation as the most significant setback to the Red Command since its establishment. They claim that among the deceased, more than 95% had proven links to the Red Command, 59 people had outstanding arrest warrants, and at least 97 had criminal records.
Strong disapproval, on the other hand, has been voiced by President Lula, who said he was “astonished” that the federal government had not been informed. He declared that his government will seek an independent investigation into what he called a “disastrous” police “massacre”, explaining: “I think it’s important to verify the conditions under which it occurred […] the judge’s order was for arrest warrants to be executed, not a massacre. And there was a massacre”.
The difference in opinion between Castro and Lula is natural, given that Castro is a close ally of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who favoured a shoot-to-kill approach to public security. Castro has thus been attempting to strengthen his tough-on-crime attitude, with the police operation serving as part of his efforts to deal a decisive blow to crime ahead of elections next year. Moreover, Castro opposes Lula’s proposed public security bill which aims to increase federal oversight of police powers. This is perceived as a threat to the authority of state governors such as Castro, who is currently able to form his own public security strategy and command large law enforcement forces.
Polls have shown broad public approval for the raid, which has the highest death toll in Rio’s history. A survey found that 62 percent of Rio’s residents viewed the police operation positively, and among favela residents whose daily lives are shaped by criminal gangs, that figure rose to 88 percent. Brazilian media coverage, too, has largely interpreted this militaristic action as a necessary measure to contain organised crime. This does not represent all public opinion, however, as on 31 October, hundreds of protesters marched through the Penha favela to demonstrate outrage over the deadly operation, calling Castro an “assassin” and demanding his resignation. Local councilwoman Mônica Benício embodies their protesting: “The governor said he was doing this operation to combat drug-trafficking. But we need to suffocate who is financing it. We need policies that seek to tackle corruption”, adding that “assassinating young people in favelas isn’t public policy, it’s a massacre”.
The United Nations Human Rights Office was likewise “horrified” by the police operation. Particular worry from Human Rights Watch comes over the lack of preservation of the crime scene, which has prevented circumstances of death from being properly established as forensic experts did not conduct a crime scene analysis in any of the killings. Moreover, according to Agencia Brasil, residents of the areas where the operation took place said dozens of bodies found in a nearby forest showed signs of having surrendered, including having their hands and legs tied, as well as signs that suggest they may have suffered execution and torture. Among the dead there were also a 14-year-old and a 19-year-old who was decapitated with his head exhibited on a tree. It is suggestive of extrajudicial executions, and under international human rights law, lethal force may only be used when strictly necessary to protect life or prevent serious injury.
What does this mean for Brazil?
Big police raids are not unusual in Rio, but the number of fatalities in this one is. Ultimately, security experts and activists argue that the raid will do nothing to fundamentally weaken the Red Command or solve Rio’s four-decade conflict, which has seen heavily armed drug traffickers occupy poor areas abandoned by the police. This stance is voiced by security specialist Cecília Olliveira, part of Fogo Cruzado (Cross Fire) which tracks armed violence, who has said that, “if killing people fixed the problem, Brazil would be Switzerland”.
The operation does represent a turning point for Brazilian policing. Its unprecedented scale and violence, paired with the generally positive public response, has set a new precedent: Rio has raised the scale of lethal force that can be acceptably deployed in the name of combating organised crime.
Yet this mano dura approach has been trialled before and shown to fail in producing long-term gains in the fight against organised crime. Brazil last saw a lethal state intervention on such a scale in 1992, when São Paulo police killed 111 prison inmates in the Carandiru massacre. Similarly to Castro, the São Paulo state government at the time portrayed the massacre as a show of strength against criminality. However, in its aftermath a group of inmates banded together to prevent further police violence. They became known as the PCC, the Primeiro Comando da Capital or First Capital Command, which today is Brazil’s biggest and best-organised criminal network and has since expanded its operations internationally.
The 28 October massacre in Rio now risks repeating this vicious cycle. History has shown that a lethal police response to organised crime often exacerbates the problem rather than solving it. Only time will tell what the results of this massacre, now overshadowed by COP30, will be.