Police shot dead at least 22 people on Wednesday in an iron-fisted crackdown against a powerful criminal gang blamed for lethal attacks in São Paulo as Brazil’s president criticised local authorities for refusing federal assistance.
After violence left more than 150 dead in five days, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said it appeared that order had been restored but said the state of São Paulo refused offers of help from the federal government.
The central government offered assistance to the governor of São Paulo, Claudio Lembo, but ”he said kindly that he didn’t need it,” Lula told reporters.
Amid press headlines of ”revenge” and ”massacre in São Paulo”, state authorities said 93 followers of the Capital First Command gang, better known by its Portuguese initials PCC, have been killed over the five days.
The clashes claimed the lives of 40 police and four members of the public, and 18 prisoners have died in prison riots blamed on the PCC.
”The situation is under control,” said Lembo, the governor of São Paulo, after another night of violence in which police shot dead 22 suspects.
The PCC unleashed the violence last Friday after several hundred of its members, including its leader Marcos Cacho, also known as ”Marcola”, were moved from various jails into a top security prison.
City police commander Elizeu Teixera Borges said the most recent violence was not caused by the gangs but by opportunists trying to exploit the chaos.
While Lula said the situation appeared to be improving, the president said that ”we remain worried because organised crime definitely cannot be more powerful than society, than the police, than the state [of São Paulo] or the Union [federal government].”
Asked about polls that showed the public blamed both the São Paulo authorities and the federal government, Lula said: ”I think that we all are responsible. I believe that all of Brazilian society is responsible.”
Lula said a lack of investment in education in recent decades had created the conditions for gang violence.
The president also said he had seen press reports saying the state authorities may have negotiated an accord with the PCC leadership.
The São Paulo government denied an agreement had been reached but has admitted there were contacts with Marcola at the Presidente Bernardes prison where he is held.
The head of the São Paulo prison system, Nagashi Furukawa, told reporters on Tuesday that he had allowed a lawyer to visit Marcola on Sunday and to report that the gang leader had not been harmed.
A poll published on Wednesday by the Datafolha institute showed that 65% of the city’s population believed that authorities had negotiated with the PCC and 42% condemned the talks.
São Paulo’s shaken inhabitants said the country needed tougher laws against crime, social programs and no concessions granted to gang leaders.
”We need to reform the prison system and amend the penal code to have tougher laws against criminal organisations. It is an embarrassment for Brazil that these criminals are more organised than the police,” said priest Juarez Castro, communication secretary for the archdiocese of São Paulo.
Police believed PCC leaders were orchestrating the violence from their cells using cellphones and ordered transmitting towers near prisons closed down. They also ordered a crackdown on the gang in the São Paulo metropolis, a sprawling region with 20-million inhabitants.
Officers armed with sub-machine guns were on patrol in volatile areas while newspapers used headlines of ”On the fifth day, revenge” and ”Police respond with a massacre in São Paulo” to describe the police reaction.
Reports started to give accounts by witnesses of people being killed who had nothing to do with the PCC gang. Human rights groups have also complained about the police tactics.
The PCC is the biggest criminal gang in São Paulo state and has a major power base in state prisons. The gang grew in the prison network in 1990s and has been blamed for a number of deadly jail riots in recent years.
On top of attacks in São Paulo, dozens of riots erupted in prisons which were eventually quelled on Monday. Many died in fires that were started in the facilities.
The Brazilian Senate’s Justice Commission on Wednesday proposed emergency laws to clamp down on the gang lawlessness in prisons. But Justice Minister Marcio Thomaz Bastio warned against ”panic legislation at a time when society is in crisis”. – Sapa-AFP