RIO DRUG GANGS' VIOLENCE 'OUT OF CONTROL'

Police Are Not 'Prepared To Fight This'

RIO DE JANEIRO - After drug traffickers sprayed university students with
gunfire this week, Rio de Janeiro's top cop made it official: Drug violence
in Rio, he said, is "out of control."

Drug gangs, who used to confine their violence to the slums they live in,
also torched several more public buses this week. They fought pitched gun
battles in daylight against police along the main thoroughfares linking the
airport to Rio's famous Ipanema and Copacabana beaches. In recent months,
they also have attacked government buildings and shopping malls.

It adds up to a lot of carnage.

Between May and December last year, the state of Rio de Janeiro posted
4,534 homicides, many drug-related, most in the city of Rio and its slums.
That's about 10 times the murder rate in Chicago, a city roughly the same size.

"The situation has been out of control since last September," Anthony
Garotinho, public-security director for the state of Rio, said at a press
conference called Wednesday to announce new police strategies and goals.

Garotinho warned Rio residents to steel themselves for more violence. He
predicted traffickers, taking cues from terrorists, would target civilians
to punish police and dissuade them from pursuing drugs and drug gangs.

"No police force in Brazil is prepared to fight this," Garotinho said. He
said the gangs' new tactic "must be understood, confronted and defeated."

Two days before, a drug faction from the Morro de Turano slum had fired on
an outdoor cafe on the campus of the nearby Estacio de Sa University.

As terrified students scattered, nursing student Luciana Goncalves de
Novaes, 19, slumped in a pool of blood. The bullet that ripped through her
jaw left her in a coma.

Warning Given

Police now confirm they had received threats beforehand warning that
civilians would be targeted to avenge the slaying by police of a local
trafficker.

Near nightfall Wednesday, not a single person sat outside the normally
crowded university cafe located about a quarter mile from the Morro de
Turano slum.

"I am petrified to be here now," said Camilla de Souza, 21, a nursing
student brave enough to come in for a take-out order. She jumped at the
crack of a distant noise.

Behind the counter, a 25-year-old cashier named Ana said she was afraid to
come to work but needs the paycheck.

"Every day it gets worse," she said, telling how traffickers routinely
order compliant administrators to close down the university and send
students home.

Troops Used

Rio's drug gangs made world headlines in February when their threat to
disrupt Carnaval week activities prompted the Brazilian government to order
military patrols of city streets.

During elections last year, soldiers patrolled some of Rio's most violent
slums to ensure order. This week Brazil's generals made it known that if
asked by state officials they are willing to send soldiers again back onto
Rio streets.

On Wednesday, two members of an elite police "shock unit" partially
occupying Morro de Turano offered a reporter a frontline view of Rio's drug
war. They insisted that their names not be used. Many of Rio's poorly paid
police live in the same slums controlled by traffickers and risk execution
if discovered.

On patrol, they dart from one protected position to the next and cover one
another like Israeli troops in the disputed territories or U.S. soldiers
searching houses in Iraq. They point their guns up, down and around every
corner before exposing themselves to hostile gunfire.

The patrolling cops griped incessantly about low pay, long hours and high
risks. They also conveyed a sense of desperation.

"My daughter is two years old," said one. "What kind of world awaits her?"

Brazil's 171 million people make up the world's second biggest cocaine
market after the United States. Luiz Fernando da Costa, a baby-faced
Afro-Brazilian, nicknamed Fernandinho Beira-Mar, or Little Freddy Seaside,
is said to be Brazil's leading cocaine entrepreneur.

Run From Jail

Da Costa was arrested in Colombia alongside leftist guerrillas and
extradited to Brazil in 2001, where he reportedly runs his drug gang,
Comando Vermelho, or Red Command, from behind bars.

In recent months, authorities have shuttled Little Freddy Seaside from one
state prison to another in continent-sized Brazil. It may disrupt his gang
management, but that's not the point. State authorities don't want him
around for long.