Gang rampages in Brazil’s biggest city; more than 80 killed

05/15/2006

SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP)—Masked men attacked bars, banks and police stations with machine guns. Gangs set buses on fire. And inmates at dozens of prisons took guards hostage in an unprecedented four-day wave of violence around South America’s largest city that left more than 80 dead by Monday.

Twenty-one new killings were reported Sunday night and Monday morning, the state government of Sao Paulo said, putting the death toll at 81 in the spree set off by a gang’s fury at prison transfers: 39 police officers and prison guards, 38 suspected gang members and four civilians caught in shootouts.

Justice Minister Marcio Thomaz Bastos said President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was ready to send 4,000 federal troops to the city of 18 million, but Sao Paulo state Gov. Claudio Lembo said he didn’t need the help.

Sao Paulo’s Roman Catholic archbishop, Claudio Hummes, said the government had not done enough to stop the violence by the First Capital Command gang, or PCC.

“Society cannot accept being held hostage by criminals,” he said. “The state must improve the prison system to stop it from being a school for crime.”

The violence was triggered by an attempt to isolate PCC leaders, who control many of Sao Paulo’s teeming, notoriously corrupt prisons, by transferring eight of them to a high-security facility in a remote part of Sao Paulo state. Gang leaders reportedly used cell phones to order the attacks.

Officials worried the violence could spread to Rio de Janeiro, where 40,000 police were put on high alert and extra patrols were dispatched to slums where drug gang leaders live, police spokeswoman Thais Nunes said.

Police in Sao Paulo said at least 72 people had been arrested since Friday night, when gang members began riddling police cars with bullets, hurling grenades at police stations and attacking officers in their homes and after-work hangouts.

Violence spreads to buses

Starting Sunday night, the gang employed a new tactic: sending gunmen onto buses, ordering passengers and drivers off and torching the vehicles. There was no mention of injuries in the nearly 50 reports of bus burnings.

Thousands of drivers refused to work Monday, leaving an estimated 2.9 million people scrambling to find a way to their jobs.

While most stores and businesses remained open, the city’s normally clogged downtown streets were largely free of traffic and pedestrians.

Worried parents kept many children out of schools and many businesses shut by 4 p.m. so workers could get home by dark. Sao Paulo’s main stock exchange, the Bovespa, canceled after-hours trading to let investors and workers get home early.

As a bus smoldered near his home in a working-class neighborhood, engineering student Julio Cesar said he would skip classes.

“Of course I’m scared to take the bus, because now they are targeting people and not just police,” said Cesar, 19. “I’m also scared to leave because my mom lives here.”

Gilson Adei, 35, driving one of the few buses in downtown Sao Paulo, demanded authorities lash back at the criminals.

“It’s absurd; the gang members can do whatever they want? They can just start a war? And why would they attack the transportation, normal people? Next it will be schools,” he said.

“We should get the military on every corner and kill them.”

Prison officials said they do not know how many inmates have died in Sao Paulo’s lockups because many were still under prisoner control.

In Mato Grosso do Sul state, which borders Sao Paulo, three prison riots were brought under control but inmates still controlled another jail and had killed a fellow prisoner.

Uprisings were still under way at 29 prisons in Sao Paulo state Monday, with rebellions quelled at 40 facilities.

Inmates were holding 117 prison guards hostage but had made no demands and hadn’t harmed any of their hostages, said Jorge de Souza, a press spokesman for the Sao Paulo Prison Affairs Department.

The PCC was founded in 1993 in Sao Paulo’s Taubate Penitentiary and became involved in drug and arms trafficking, kidnappings, bank robberies and extortion.

It staged a massive prison uprising in 2001 in which 19 inmates died. It attacked more than 50 police stations in November 2003. Three officers and two suspected gang members were killed and 12 people injured in those attacks.