Rio’s Residents Protest Current Crime Wave

Thousands of residents of crime-hit Rio de Janeiro, many of them wearing black, joined an anti-violence march along the picturesque Ipanema beach Sunday after a bloody hostage drama that shook Brazil last week.

“Mourning for peace,” read a banner, carried by marchers in black. “We are prisoners of fear,” read another placard. “Enough, enough, enough of violence!” was written on another.

Many protesters wore black T-shirts--a sharp contrast to the bright clothing that Cariocas, or Rio residents, normally sport on weekend strolls along the beachside avenue.

Earlier, residents and Catholic priests held a memorial service at the site in the upscale Jardim Botanico neighborhood, where a young woman died June 12 at the hands of a lone gunman after a foiled police attempt to shoot him.

People cried as they lay flowers and sang at the spot, where a memorial church bell was installed.

A crime wave has hit Brazil’s second-largest city, which features famed picture-postcard beaches and beautiful hills.

On Monday, the armed gunman, who was on the run from police, tormented hostages for four hours on a bus as television cameras broadcast the drama live across Latin America. A 20-year-old arts teacher died during the final shootout with police, whose performance Rio Gov. Anthony Garotinho labeled as “a disaster.”

On Wednesday, thieves broke into a hillside Rio mansion, doused an 85-year-old woman with cooking fuel and threatened to torch her if she refused to open her safe. And on Thursday, armed robbers rampaged through famed Copacabana beach in broad daylight, holding up a bakery and a bus, which ended in a shootout with police.

Shootouts between drug gangs and police have long made Rio one of the most violent cities in the Americas with 69 homicides per 100,000 residents--more than twice the murder rate in New York City when crime was at its worst.

The government is readying an expensive package of measures to combat crime, mainly focusing on strengthening police, which it plans to reveal this week. One of the authors of the measures said the hostage drama “has done more in 48 hours than the Senate and government have managed in months.”

But many Brazilians say something has to be done about the social roots of the crime, which often stems from poverty and despair, as well as police brutality.

According to some media reports, the 22-year-old gunman was one of the survivors of the notorious 1993 Candelaria massacre, in which police officers fired randomly at about 70 children, some playing and some sleeping, on the steps of a Rio church.

The hostage drama again raised the questions of police brutality and the lack of preparedness.

In Monday’s fracas, a maverick policeman surprised the gunman from behind and fired his submachine gun at point-blank range. But the bullets grazed the hostage instead of the gunman, who then shot and killed the woman.

To make matters worse, officials have said police suffocated the gunman after whisking him off in a van. Garotinho fired his police chief, while the policeman who shot at the gunman and those who allegedly strangled him were under investigation.