23 Brazil police killed in wave of gang attacks
A wave of attacks on police by a notorious gang has killed at least 30 people - including 23 officers – in the bloodiest assault of its kind in the history of Brazil’s largest state, authorities said.
Related uprisings at 18 prisons across Sao Paulo state continued late yesterday, the night after scores of armed assaults on police stations, patrol cars and bars frequented by off-duty officers.
The attacks starting on Friday night were the work of the First Capital Command, known by the Portuguese initials PCC, said Enio Lucciola, press spokesman for the Sao Paulo State Public Safety Department.
“It is trying to undermine our authority and intimidate us and the population at large at a time when we have redoubled our efforts to destroy the organisation,” Lucciola said by telephone.
The attacks apparently came in response to several imprisoned PCC leaders being transferred and placed in solitary confinement, a practice authorities use to sever prisoners’ ties to gang members outside prison.
Public Safety Secretary Saulo de Castro Abreu told a news conference that the PCC carried out 55 separate attacks on Friday and yesterday that killed at least 23 police officers, the girlfriend of one of them, a passer-by and five suspected gang members.
The attacks and ensuing gun battles left wounded another 32 people – 15 policemen, 15 attackers and two bystanders – he said.
At least 16 suspects were arrested.
Founded in 1993 by prisoners at the Taubate Penitentiary in Sao Paulo, the PCC is involved in drug and arms trafficking, kidnappings, bank robberies and prison breaks and rebellions, police say.
Police yesterday set up checkpoints in the low-income Sapopemba district of Sao Paulo, stopping and searching vehicles for weapons. Brazilian TV stations broadcast images of bullet-riddled police cars and shattered glass at a police station that was attacked.
Abreu said police were targeted in Sao Paulo and in the suburbs of Osasco, Guarulhos and Carapicuiba.
Police stations in the coastal cities of Cubatao and Guaruja – about 80 kilometres (50 miles) southeast of Sao Paulo – also were attacked.
Nagashi Furukawa, prison affairs secretary for Sao Paulo state, said that the PCC also apparently orchestrated rebellions in 24 of the state’s 144 prisons.
