The three deaths are part of a wave of shootings this month that has residents on edge in metropolitan Rio de Janeiro, the host city for next year's Olympics. In addition to the fatalities, at least 10 other people have been wounded by stray bullets in recent days, prompting community leaders to complain that a police crackdown on criminal gangs is provoking heavy-powered gunbattles that are catching innocent bystanders in the violence. The city's six-year effort to reclaim slums that were held for decades by drug traffickers has concentrated gangs into shrinking territories, sparking intense fights between rival factions. [...] the senselessness of the recent deaths has shaken the metropolis, becoming the topic of intense TV coverage, newspaper columns denouncing the violence and conversations in juice shops, cafes and cabs. For Ilona Szabo de Carvalho, director of the Igarape Institute, a Rio-based security and social issues think tank, the spike in stray-bullet cases is a symptom of the federal government's inability to reform security forces, namely to centralize the dual investigative and patrolling police units each state oversees. Most police use assault rifles capable of sending bullets some 3,000 meters (9,800 feet), despite mostly taking on traffickers at much closer ranges. Carvalho said Brazilian society simply has come to expect that violent confrontations between police and drug gangs are the best way to fight the nation's war on drugs, rather than demanding drug law reforms that could reduce violence. At the funeral this week for Nascimento, the mother killed by a stray bullet, William de Oliveira, a community leader from the slum where she lived and died, said it's the civilians caught in the crossfire who pay the price.
Rio De Janeiro Unnerved By Wave Of Stray-bullet Cases
By BRAD BROOKS and YESICA FISCH, Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle: World
Thu, 01/29/2015 - 11:03pm
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