LATIN AMERICA : Rio Crime Crackdown, Part II: Thumbs Down for the Sequel

From its name to its results, it is beginning to take on the characteristics of a bad sequel to a mediocre movie.

Operation Rio II, military commanders and government officers call it. The army is back to try to stamp out crime in Brazil’s most famous city, where nearly 20 people are killed daily, 30 are kidnaped monthly and armed bandits periodically block off highways during rush hour and brazenly rob hapless commuters.

The new effort comes on the heels of the much-hyped Operation Rio I, which started with a bang last year and ended with a whimper in January. In an unprecedented agreement in October between the governor and president, about 10,000 soldiers joined forces with the city’s military and federal police in an effort to give some relief to the city’s 8 million crime-weary residents.

Despite a promising beginning, Rio I was viewed as a failure in the end. The nightly shooting between rival drug gangs in the city’s poor neighborhoods did abate for a while, and cabdrivers and vendors said they noticed a decline in street crime.

Drug traffickers did disappear, but mostly to cool their heels in nearby towns and resort communities while they waited for the army to leave. As soon as the exercise ended, criminal activity returned to its normal level.

“It was like the army was never here,” said electrician Jose Teixeira Lima, 57, who works downtown as a street vendor when business is slow. “It feels even more dangerous than before.”

It does not appear that Operation Rio II will fare any better, and it is getting off to an even worse start. Despite claims by Gov. Marcelo Alencar of better coordination between police and the military, their success so far has been minimal.

For example, during one “blitz”--the police term for random searches at roadblocks--five hours and 120 police officers netted only one man with a gun.

Making matters worse, drug traffickers and bandits this time did not go underground after advance publicity about the army’s return. Instead, they are boldly challenging the police and the military. On the first day of Rio II, a policeman was shot. On the second day, a police outpost was burned to the ground. Another was incinerated a few days later, the same day a policeman was pulled off a bus and shot to death by a gang. A few days later, bandits broke into a supposedly impregnable air force facility to steal weapons.

Another policeman was killed in a shootout this week, the 24th this year. In what seems a mockery of law enforcement efforts, bandits have responded to the police blitzes by conducting some of their own. A restaurant owner was murdered this week when he tried to flee during one bandit roadblock.

Meanwhile, crime has not abated. During the first week of Rio II, there were a record 28 murders in one day.

While some residents say they feel relieved that the army is combatting crime in Rio, few, including Mayor Cesar Maia, believe the move will have any lasting effect.

“It doesn’t go far enough,” said Maia, whose office has no control over local law enforcement. “The army needs to come in and stay in these communities for two or three years.”

Others argue that the government is mistaken to attempt a military solution of what is largely a social problem driven by the huge disparity in income between rich and poor in Brazil.

Wages are so low for the vast majority of Brazilians that crime is an attractive option, they argue. Tens of thousands of young women in Rio, for instance, have turned to prostitution, where they can easily earn $150 in two days. That is about what half of Brazilian workers earn in a whole month.

Men, most of whom never complete junior high school, are left with the more violent criminal alternatives--robbery, theft and drugs.

“The city doesn’t understand how to deal with this problem,” Archbishop Dom Eugenio Sales said. “We need a conversion of Rio de Janeiro from a city rife with misery and violence into a city with compassion for its excluded.”