Police struck back Tuesday at gangs that rampaged through South America’s largest city, killing 33 suspected gang members in less than 24 hours and frisking motorists at roadblocks while reporting only one death of their own.
At least 133 people — including 40 police officers — have been killed since Friday night, when a prison transfer of gang leaders sparked attacks on police stations, courts, city buses and other symbols of government authority.
But while gang attacks fell off sharply in Sao Paulo on Tuesday, the death toll within their ranks rose dramatically.
Officers “acted within the law, but that doesn’t mean we have to let them humiliate us,” Marco Antonio Desgualdo, a top Sao Paulo state law enforcement official, told reporters. He did not give specifics about the killings.
Separately, prison officials said the bodies of 18 inmates were found after police retook control of dozens of jails where prisoners rioted at the same time that gang members attacked officers across Sao Paulo.
Details of how they died were not immediately disclosed. Inmates periodically use Brazilian prison uprisings to settle scores.
The overall five-day death toll stood at 71 suspected criminals, 40 police officers and jail guards, the 18 prison inmates and four civilians caught in the crossfire.
The crime spree showed the strength of organized crime in the financial and industrial heart of Brazil, and it sent fear rippling through the metropolis of 18 million.
With guns drawn, plainclothes police in a Sao Paulo suburb stopped and frisked motorists in a hunt for more gang members.
A wary eye on motorocyclists
Police in Osasco, 10 miles from the center of Sao Paulo, were targeting motorcyclists with passengers for spot checks after one of their own was shot and killed by a gunman on the back of a bike, said Officer Vladimir Storel. The dead officer was the only policeman killed this year in the suburb of 1 million.
“We’re only out here because of the attacks,” said Storel, surrounded by fellow policemen wielding pistols, shotguns and Uzi submachine guns. They patted down riders and checked IDs against a list of suspected gang members.
Across Sao Paulo, police were redeployed in greater numbers to halt the attacks, and authorities said at least 115 people had been arrested since Friday night.
But many citizens said the ferocity of the First Capital Command gang, or PCC, made them doubt law enforcement will ever solve the gang problem.
Some Sao Paulo residents said they now fear being seen near police officers who could be targeted by attackers.
“Now you get scared when you pass police,” said bank manager Cleide Boeing, 45. “I trying to stay away from the police now.”
‘It's a civil war’
Using machine guns and grenades, gang members attacked dozens of police installations, burned scores of buses and vandalized 15 bank branches over the weekend. Inmates took over 73 prisons and held more than 200 guards hostage.
Gang attacks finally ebbed Tuesday morning, but Sao Paulo residents said they were still stunned.
“It’s a civil war,” said Manuela Nascimento, a 24-year-old newsstand worker. “Now I leave my house scared and go to work scared.”
In other South American countries like Venezuela, Peru and Paraguay, organized crime gangs keep a low profile as they smuggle drugs abroad.
The PCC, however, has focused on the booming local drug trade in Sao Paulo, where recruits are easy to find in crime-ridden slums.
Violence by cell phone?
The violence was triggered Thursday by an attempt to isolate the gang leaders — who control many of city’s teeming, notoriously corrupt prisons — by transferring eight to a high-security facility.
The gang leaders reportedly used cell phones to order the attacks.
Sao Paulo’s two leading newspapers reported Tuesday that authorities cut a deal with the gang to stop the attacks — claims Desgualdo strongly denied. He said strong police action had stifled the criminal attacks.
But crime experts said such a deal sounded plausible, given the growing strength of the gang, which was formed in a prison in 1993 and expanded to between 10,000 and 30,000 members as Brazil became the second-largest cocaine-consuming nation after the United States.
“I am sure that despite official denials, authorities negotiated an end to the uprisings and attacks,” said Walter Fanganiello Maierovitch, Brazil’s former drug czar.
Return to near normal
Sao Paulo appeared to be returning to normal Tuesday morning. There were only a few reported attacks Monday night and Tuesday, compared to 181 over the previous four days.
Bus service was fully restored after panicked drivers stayed home Monday over fears they might be attacked, leaving 2.9 million people scrambling to find a way to work.
At the roadblock in Osasco, housewife and law school student Marcia Barros waited patiently with her pink motorcycle helmet in hand as police frisked her husband against a wall.
“There’s no way of knowing what’s going to happen now, and that’s what scares us,” said Barros, 33.
