Follow Up to the Weekend's Events in Rio

There is some good news in this article about last weekend's events in Rio de Janeiro and it's chiefly this:

With the community policing effort, police officers try to establish a more permanent presence within the shantytowns. That differs from the prevailing approach for more than a decade, in which the police guarded the entrances to the favelas and ventured in only for select operations that often turned into deadly gun battles with traffickers.

Though the community policing effort has so far been limited, law enforcement experts said they were encouraged.

“For the first time the police are not coming into the favelas shooting, and then leaving only to draw the hatred and scorn of the residents,” said Silvia Ramos, the coordinator of the Centro de Estudos de Segurança e Cidadania at the University of Cândido Mendes in Rio.

These events started as the result of a turf war between two gangs as the article notes. I would hardly consider this a wake up call, bit for Rio's sake, it's better that it happened now and not shortly before the games. More disturbing images like these will be difficult to deal with:

Comments

[Tambopaxi]

Randy, With all due respect, I see most of the NYT article as being of the sow's ear variety, not the silk purse.

I just got through reading Jon Anderson's article on the favelas and the gangs in the New Yorker magazine, and I don't think it's the sort of thing that the Rio Chamber of Commerce or the Rio Olympics Committee will be distributing any time soon. No sooner do I put that down, then this police 'copter gets shot down.

I guess this isn't a wake up call because this sort of thing is to be expected?

I gotta tell ya, I'm wondering how the favela lords see the Games award, what they see in it for themselves, and what they're planning to do about the Games, and particularly international visitors come 2016...