Tackling Rio's Rotten Cops

Drugs and guns: don't trust Rio police with these items

As Brazil starts clearing its shanty towns of gangsters and drug barons in time to make things look nice and pretty for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, it’s being forced to tackle another long term internal problem – the corruption and violence of its own police force complicit in the drugs trade. The Associated Press reported Tuesday that an anti-corruption sting in Rio de Janeiro resulted in the arrest of 30 officers, following which the head of the Rio state’s investigative police, Allan Turnowski, resigned.

Turnowski’s former deputy, Carlos Antonio Luiz Oliveira, “was one of the officers arrested and charged with corruption, theft, and collaboration with drug traffickers”, the AP reported. Two of Turnowski’s predecessors over the past five years were also arrested at various times. With a police force this rotten, it must be tough to know where to start, with the 30 arrested officers “accused of selling heavy weapons to gangs, tipping off gangs about police raids, and stealing and selling drugs, money and weapons confiscated by police”. There’s also the staggering statistic from the 2009 Human Rights Watch report on Brazil stating that Rio police kill one in every 23 people they arrest.

Given that background, the arrests at least represent a scantling of good news, depending on how deeply police corruption has infested Rio. For a somewhat depressing overview of what Rio de Janeiro is facing as a city in the run-up to the big sporting events, read resident Dr. Christopher Gaffney’s blog post from the end of last year, Laws, Evictions and Demolitions.