Police believed behind massacre in Brazil

[Judi Lynn]

April 2, 2005, 12:40AM

Police believed behind massacre in Brazil
30 are killed in two attacks in suburbs of Rio
By MICHAEL ASTOR
Associated Press

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL - At least 30 people were killed in drive-by shootings in two gritty, working-class suburbs late Thursday night and early Friday, in what the local authorities described as perhaps the worst bloodbath in the history of this often violent city.

At a news conference here on Friday, the secretary of public security for the state of Rio de Janeiro, Marcelo Itagiba, strongly hinted that the gunmen were military police officers angered by a recent campaign to crack down on police violence and corruption. Arrests of rogue officers may have incited others "who do not know how to use uniforms and badges" to take reprisals against the civilian population they are supposed to defend, he said.
(snip)

Witnesses said the victims, who included a 7-year-old and some teenagers, were mowed down by four men in a white car. Some of the dead were shot as they stood outside a carwash while others were killed in front of a bar, at a plaza called Bible Square, running toward a highway for safety, or as they were simply walking down the street on an unseasonably warm autumn night.

Earlier this week, two men in the same area, one a convicted drug dealer, were abducted from a bar and killed, with the head of one of them then being thrown over a wall into a police station. According to local news accounts, surveillance cameras showed eight men, seven in police uniforms, driving up to the station and dumping the bodies. Eight military police officers were arrested on Wednesday.
(snip/...)

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/headline/world/3113682
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[DoYouEverWonder]

1. Drive-by slaughter claims 30 (Rio de Janeiro)

April 01, 2005

THIRTY people including three children have been killed by eight gunmen in two cars driving around northern Rio de Janeiro, an official told Brazilian radio.

The shooters killed 15 people in the Nova Iguazu neighborhood around 8:40 pm (1340 AEST), followed by another 15 an hour later in Queimados, Secretary of Security of Rio de Janeiro state Marcelo Itagiba said.

The group appeared to be "made up of police officers", he said.

Human rights groups in the past have accused police death squads of killing street kids.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,12727015%255E23109,00.html

[struggle4progress]

2. Police hold 2 suspects in Brazil massacre

MICHAEL ASTOR
Associated Press

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Two police officers suspected in a shooting spree that left 30 people dead in Rio de Janeiro last week were detained Saturday after an intensive manhunt, authorities said. <snip>

Composite sketches and anonymous tips led police to officers Jose Augusto Moreira Felipe, 32, and Fabiano Goncalves Lopes, 30, police said. They were being interrogated but had not yet been charged, said Marcela Lobo, a spokeswoman for the Rio de Janeiro Public Safety Department. <snip>

Police believe the suspects were linked to so-called death squads - shadowy associations, often made up of off-duty or retired police officers, hired by local businessmen to kill undesirables.

Marcelo Itagiba, Rio's state security secretary, said the crime was likely the work of police angered by the arrest of eight officers caught on film while disposing of two bodies. <snip>

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/11296848.htm

[dArKeR]

3. Police suspected in Rio rampage

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2005/04/03/2003248930

[Judi Lynn]

4. Complete contempt for human beings.

You really have to be screwed up to take part in something like this. From your article:

According to witnesses, at around 10pm the gunmen got out of a silver Volkswagen and fired on the crowd at a street-corner bar. Fifteen people were found dead in and around the bar and three more victims died of their injuries in the hospital Friday.

The gunmen, perhaps joined by a second car, then cruised to the nearby Queimados neighborhood where they killed an additional 12 people in two separate shootings.

Roger Ancillotti, chief of the police forensics unit, said most of the victims had been shot in the head, neck or chest, suggesting a highly professional job.

"They were firing out the windows as they left so no one would look at them," said a resident who would only identify himself as Joao.
(snip)

Hope Lula da Silva will be able to turn this vile habit around for Brazil's poor, the targets of these death squad attacks.