The army could be deployed on the streets of Rio de Janeiro in an attempt to curtail the urban violence that is spiralling out of control in Brazil’s cultural capital.

The federal Government was meeting yesterday to consider a request from Sérgio Cabral, the state governor, for the military to restore public order after an upsurge in violence that has left 39 police officers dead since the start of this year.

Mr Cabral said that Rio was living through a security crisis and that despite successive efforts “it has been very difficult, with the resources available, to face up to the advance of criminality which threatens public order”.

The request came days after a police bodyguard detailed to protect Mr Cabral’s family was shot dead when his car was attacked. Speaking at the funeral, the governor said that people in the city were in a state of panic and that now was the time for the state and federal Government to join forces.

The self-styled “Marvellous City” is also the most violent in Brazil. In January the murder rate jumped 26 per cent compared with the same month last year and Rio Body Count, a volunteer group that tracks violence in the state, calculates that 653 people have been killed in all of Rio since the beginning of February.

President Lula da Silva said that the army was ready to help. He was meeting senior officers and members of his Government yesterday to examine what role it might play in Rio.

But there is opposition to the idea of placing soldiers on the streets to combat criminals. The army high command has indicated that it will be willing to act only if its men are not placed under state control, and believes that Mr Cabral must declare formally that the state’s security forces are “unavailable, inexistent or insufficient” for any deployment to be constitutional, something that yesterday’s request stopped short of doing.

There is also opposition within Mr Lula da Silva’s Cabinet. Tarso Genro, the Justice Minister, said that troops “are trained for other types of action, for acting in a war situation. Therefore, they do not have adequate training for policing jobs”.

In January Waldir Pires, the Defence Minister, turned down a first request for troops from Mr Cabral. Instead, Mr Lula da Silva ordered men from the National Public Security Force, an elite police unit, to the state. But so far only 500 of this unit have been deployed and none in the Rio metropolitan area, where most of the violence occurs.

Many shantytowns dotted throughout the city are located on steep hills, large parts of which can be accessed only by foot, making them easily defendable by gangs against police incursions. These gangs are heavily armed, thanks to the city’s lucrative cocaine trade.

Efforts to tackle Rio’s security crisis over the years have been impeded by endemic corruption and chronically inefficient administration that has been unable to reverse the city’s decline since the middle of the last century, when the federal capital moved to BrasÍlia and São Paulo overtook it as the country’s leading industrial and financial centre.

Rio’s police force is known as one of Brazil’s most corrupt, with many officers accepting money from drug gangs for turning a blind eye and even in exchange for guns.

Another concern is about placing soldiers in direct engagement with criminals, lest they be corrupted by the large sums of money that the drug traffickers who occupy Rio’s shantytowns have at their disposal.

Last year 1,200 soldiers occupied several Rio slums after drug traffickers robbed several army rifles from a barracks. Despite the occupation the guns were returned only after a murky deal between army commanders and gang leaders.

Crimewave

653: people killed in Rio since beginning of February

50: annual murder rate per 100,000 residents

18: people killed on one day of confrontation between authorities and criminal gangs in December

13: age of youngest person charged in connection with the violence

Source: Times archives; US State Department; realinstitutoelcano.org

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