Operation Containment against the Red Command, on October 28th, in the Penha and Alemão complexes, in Rio de Janeiro, killed 121 Brazilian citizens, including four police officers.
And it injured 13 people, plus nine security agents and four civilians, two of whom remain in serious condition.
Therefore, he left thousands of mothers, fathers, brothers, children and friends of the dead and injured in mourning or in despair.
However, Urso, head of drug trafficking in the favelas of those regions and main target of the operation, remains at large. The “deputies” Pezão and Abelha, ditto. Pedro Bala, the organization’s operational leader, also escaped. Gardenal, a criminal responsible for security and territorial expansion, is another who remains at large, as does BMW, the leader responsible for recruiting and training new soldiers from the feared Bear Troop.
On the other hand, ten out of ten public security experts in Brazil, in general, and in Rio, in particular, guarantee that, even after the most lethal police operation in the country’s history, insecurity will continue at exactly the same level, just as it continued after all other similar media and inconsequential operations in the past.
However, Cláudio Castro, the governor of Rio de Janeiro, considered Operation Containment “a success”.
If Commander Edward John Smith had survived the sinking of the Titanic and classified the trip across the Atlantic as a “success” it would not be so pathetic and immoral.
Furthermore, history proves that it is after massacres like this that new criminal organizations are born. The Red Command itself was created as a direct reaction to the violence and inhumanity of the Brazilian prison system during the military dictatorship, when there was a lack of food, hygiene and medical care but there was plenty of torture and arbitrary punishments.
Faced with this, the prisoners realized that only together they could protect themselves. From self-defense against state brutality inside prisons, the organization went on to attack outside of them – until today.
And the Primeiro Comando da Capital, the only criminal organization even bigger than the CV, was founded, as the statutes themselves say, to “combat oppression within the São Paulo prison system” and “avenge the massacre of the 111 prisoners”, on October 2, 1992, in the “Carandiru massacre”, the most lethal action by the Brazilian police until last October 28.
However, despite the dead, injured and fugitives and the evidence of history, approval of the governor’s administration reached its highest level in the days following the operation, with 40% of “excellent” and “good” opinions, according to the Datafolha institute, because we live in an era in which almost half of the population unabashedly defends the medieval maxim “a good criminal is a dead criminal”.
And the trial, which began on the 4th, to investigate accusations of abuse of economic power by Castro in the equivalent of 40 million euros, is barely talked about.
Yes, the governor of Rio is right: Operation Containment was indeed a success – for him.
Journalist, correspondent in São Paulo