Brazilian gang continues offensive
May 15, 2006. 11:14 AM
STAN LEHMAN
ASSOCIATED PRESS
SAO PAULO, Brazil - A criminal gang's bloody wave of attacks on police continued Monday, raising the reported death toll to more than 70 in four days of violence that have started to choke normal life in South America's largest city.
A wave of prison uprisings also continued across Sao Paulo state and the Brazilian news media reported that the federal government was preparing to send troops to restore order in the region.
Officials said Sunday that the death toll had reached at least 52 after at least 100 separate attacks since Friday, but the Globo TV network reported that additional overnight attacks had raised the toll to "more than 70."
Most of those dead were reported to be police officers targeted by a powerful criminal gang protesting transfer of some of its leaders from their current prisons to more remote lockups.
Officials said they had arrested at least 72 suspects.
Attacks on public buses prompted many companies to halt service, stranding thousands of people trying to reach work Monday.
Officers in bulletproof vests set up checkpoints to search vehicles, and barriers were placed in front of many police stations.
Assailants attacked patrol cars, bars where off-duty policemen gather, a courthouse and a highway police outpost. The local news media reported that the assailants used guns, shotguns, grenades, machine-guns and homemade bombs.
Witnesses to the killing of police officer Jose Antonio Martinez told the Folha Online that two men wearing face masks approached as the officer was dining with his wife, shot him several times in the head and ran. His wife was not hurt.
"We can't let this pass," Nilo Faria Hellmeister, a police officer and friend of Martinez, told the news service.
A few kilometres away, witnesses said two groups of men bearing heavy calibre weapons appeared in front of a fire station and began shooting at random, killing a firefighter identified only as Alberto.
Dozens of new prison rebellions also broke out, with 41 uprisings under way across Sao Paulo state Sunday afternoon. Inmates were holding more than 229 prison guards hostage.
TV images showed the buses engulfed in flames, while Folha Online said passengers were ordered out of the vehicles before bandits set them ablaze.
Enio Lucciola, spokesman for the Sao Paulo State Public Safety Department, said the attacks and prison rebellions, planned by the First Capital Command, known by its Portuguese initials PCC, "were the most vicious and deadliest attacks on public security forces that have ever taken place in Brazil."
Lucciola said authorities were prepared for some kind of PCC attack once the transfer of its leaders became known. "But we never imagined it would be so big or ferocious," he said. "It caught us by surprise."
The rebellious prisoners, meanwhile, had not made any demands nor had they harmed any of their hostages, said Jorge de Souza, a media spokesman of the Sao Paulo Prison Affairs Department.
He said visiting relatives were inside several of the prisons but that "we don't consider them hostages because they are there to show solidarity with their jailed relatives. They don't want to leave."
The attacks were in response to the transfer of several imprisoned PCC leaders, a practice authorities use to sever prisoners' ties to gang members outside prison.
Eight PCC leaders were among 765 inmates transferred to a remote, high-security facility in the far western tip of Sao Paulo state.
The PCC was founded in 1993 by hardened criminals at the Taubate Penitentiary in Sao Paulo but remained a relatively obscure group until February 2001, when it organized the biggest prison uprising in Brazil's history.
The gang is involved in drug and arms trafficking, kidnappings, bank robberies and extortion, police say.
During a 10-day period in November 2003, the PCC attacked more than 50 police stations with machine-guns, homemade bombs, shotguns and pistols. Three officers and two suspected gang members were killed and 12 people injured in the apparent attempt to pressure authorities to improve prison conditions.
A 2001 prison uprising organized by the PCC resulted in the deaths of 19 inmates as the rebellion spread to dozens of penitentiaries and jails across Sao Paulo state.
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