Sixteen-year-old Marcelo Júlio Gomes do Nascimento admitted to a sneaking admiration for the police, and saw the respect that they commanded in his poor community with their tough-guy posturing and powerful weapons.
Julinho, as he was known to friends, was chatting on the porch of a shabby bar in the Rio de Janeiro suburb of Queimados, when the vicious reality of this image exploded in his face on a balmy evening last week.
An unmarked car swung into view, and its masked occupants unleashed a hail of bullets so accurate that barely a mark was left on the crumbling walls of the bar.
But this was not a drive-by shooting carried out by petty criminals. Instead, enough information has emerged to show that the killers were off-duty police officers acting out a private vendetta with their own bosses.
A short walk away from the abandoned bar, 33-year-old Adriana Paz Gomes sits on the steps of her modest home weeping for the loss of her son.
”I was watching the evening soap opera when I heard the shots. In my heart I knew immediately what had happened,” she recalls.
Gomes ran out into the street and found four bodies lying in the road, blood pouring from lethal head wounds. Then someone pointed to a fifth body, that of her son.
”I have such lovely memories of my son, but I can’t remove the image of that hole in his head. He seemed to be sleeping and I took him in my arms, but he wouldn’t wake up,” she says.
Julio’s death was the coup de grâce of a bloody massacre that left 30 people dead in one night. The shooting began in the town of Nova Iguaçu, where 18 people were killed. Some just happened to be in the street as the killers drove past, while nine of the victims, including three teenagers, were in a bar playing video games. The gunmen then moved on to Queimados, where they killed 12 more.
Local people suspected members of the local military police force, and Rio de Janeiro authorities quickly arrested 11 police officers and charged six of them.
The participation of off-duty police officers in death squads is a sinister feature of the poor suburbs to the north-west of Rio de Janeiro, in a region known as the Baixada Fluminense. Here the homicide rate is 76 per 100 000, compared with 50 per 100 000 in metropolitan Rio de Janeiro, one of the highest rates in the world.
In some communities, the role of vigilante groups is tacitly accepted as a means of reducing crime or preventing power slipping into the hands of the drug-trafficking gangs in the city’s shanty towns.
But last week’s massacre was all the more sinister because most of the victims happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The killers were apparently protesting against a disciplinary clampdown by a commanding officer recently installed at a local police battalion.
Two days before the massacre, two men, one of them a convicted drug dealer, were dragged from a bar and killed. A severed head was thrown into the compound in protest against the disciplinary measures.
Uniformed officers were caught on film disposing of bodies, and eight were later arrested. Authorities have agreed that last week’s massacre was a show of force by rogue police officers who opposed the arrests.
”These murders were not motivated by a confrontation with criminals. This was a group protecting its interests within a corporation and reducing people to symbols to send a message to their unpopular boss,” said Pedro Strozenburg, a coordinator with Viva Rio, an anti-violence group.
Sociologist José Cláudio Sousa traces the roots of death squads to Brazil’s military regime and the creation of a military police force. The police in the region continue to exercise repressive power and carry out summary executions, says Sousa.
”There is a widespread acceptance that the only good criminal is a dead criminal, and little scope for investigating the supposed culpability of the death-squad victims. This has created a monster that is beyond the power of weak public institutions,” he says.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has demanded swift action, and the Justice Minister, Marcio Thomaz Bastos, has said the government is planning to send up to 600 federal agents to form a task force.
”If these deaths had been spread over a period of weeks, the media would not have batted an eye. This time we have a bloodbath, and the clamour is so intense that I don’t think they’ll get away with it,” said Ismael Lopes, a leader of a community radio project.
”They say they are making arrests, but this is just for show. I know that one day I’ll be seeing the man who killed my son driving past me in the street,” Gomes said.
Across the street from Gomes, relatives of more victims comfort each other and plan for a demonstration against the violence. They also worry about reprisals.
”Some journalists wanted to take my photo at the funeral but I refused. There is no limit to how far these cowards will go,” said a cousin of one of the victims.
A black plastic sheet now hangs across the porch of the bar where Julinho’s life came to an end. Passers-by cast glances at the simple but eloquent message daubed in white paint: ”We want justice for the deaths of our friends.” — Guardian Unlimited Â