GANG WAR ENGULFS BRAZILIAN CAPITAL

Battle Over Drug Turf In Rio De Janeiro Slum Shows Lack Of Security

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Since police killed the head of the Friends
of Friends gang in October, the residents of South America's largest
slum worried about when the struggle for power would begin. Two weeks
ago, they got their answer.

More than three dozen members of a rival gang, Comando Vermelho, or
Red Commando, swept into the streets at the upper reaches of
Rocinha's hillside sprawl. Hurling grenades and firing automatic
weapons, they blew up power transformers, cutting off electricity and
shutting down traffic lights in the middle of the evening rush hour.

They were dressed as state police. In the ensuing battle, six people
died -- five of them bystanders, including a 14-year-old boy.
Fourteen people were arrested, mostly as they fled. After three
hours, fighters from Friends of Friends, known in Portuguese as
Amigos dos Amigos, managed to repulse the assault. But residents
doubt that's the end of the fighting.

With millions of dollars in drug sales at stake, Rocinha is too great
a prize for drug gangs to leave alone. Perched above some of Rio de
Janeiro's most affluent neighborhoods, Rocinha enjoys easy access to
rich Brazilians with a growing taste for cocaine processed in the
slum. To many in this beautiful, crime-plagued city, the bloody
battle was another painful reminder that entire neighborhoods have
become war zones. Official government forces are barely present in
the slum, and early morning dance crowds include scores of teenagers
carrying automatic weapons. "We're talking about a situation that is
out of control, where the violence feeds on itself and the poverty of
the community," said Marina Maggessi, chief narcotics investigator
for Rio de Janeiro state police. Bank teller Roberta Gomes said she'd
hoped during the weeks of peace before the Feb. 15 shootout that
Rocinha finally had seen the end of the gang wars that long had
devastated the slum.

Like many of her neighbors, she'd expected a turf battle to erupt
quickly after police killed Rocinha's top gang boss, Erismar
Rodrigues Moreira, last October. As the Carnaval holiday approached
last month, hope grew that the worst was over, Gomes said.

Many in the slum even allowed themselves to take pride in Rocinha's
samba school of musicians and dancers, which had made it into the
city's top Carnaval parade for the first time in almost a decade. The
Red Commando assault shattered those hopes.

"We don't see an end to the violence now," Gomes said. "We are always
expecting something terrible to happen."

On the slum's tense streets this week, several people said Red
Commando was preparing another invasion. Members of Friends of
Friends, many of them teens, stood guard with pistols and AK-47
rifles. Police made no effort to dispel them.

"The fighting always returns; that's something you learn living
here," resident Josie Ferreira said. "People who think it will stop
are fooling themselves."

Like other Rio de Janeiro slums, Rocinha's improvised brick buildings
cover a hill that overlooks some of the city's most exclusive
neighborhoods, which lie on lower ground.

On one side of the hill are the beaches and glitzy malls of the Sao
Conrado neighborhood. On the other side are the million-dollar
mansions of the Gavea neighborhood and the American School, the
private school that foreign residents and wealthy Brazilians favor.

The route of the assault Feb. 15 took the Red Commando forces along
the road leading past the American School. They crested the hill and
quickly destroyed the slum's power transformers. Then they swept down
the hill toward Sao Conrado and reoccupied blocks they'd lost to
Friends of Friends nearly two years ago.

With the Rocinha invasion dominating headlines across Brazil, much of
the public outrage has been directed at the police and their
inability to protect whole parts of the city, especially the poorest
neighborhoods. In Rocinha's balance of power, the police generally
stay at the bottom of the hill while gang members patrol higher up.

The day of the shootout, hundreds of state police officers
responsible for patrolling slums were at a pre-Carnaval beach
barbecue about an hour away. Law enforcement officials admitted days
later that they'd received tips about the planned invasion but had
been unable to prevent the fighting, even though the invaders had
crossed much of the city in a heavily armed convoy of vans from
another slum above the tourist-packed neighborhood of Copacabana.

Police impotence in the gang wars is a fact of life, despite
occasional successes such as the killing of Rodrigues Moreira and the
capture of other gang leaders, Maggessi said. Even when gang bosses
are caught, they often run their networks from behind bars.

"What can a few police officers in Rocinha do against 200 or 300 gang
members?" Maggessi asked. "What happened in Rocinha is happening all
over Rio de Janeiro, and we don't have the people to secure every
slum in the city."