RIO DE JANEIRO �� Teams of marksmen next year will patrol parts of Rio de Janeiro with high-power weapons and a license to kill, a security adviser to Gov.-elect Wilson Witzel said.
As many as 120 sharpshooters will accompany police into the slums of Brazil's second-largest city to kill gun-toting criminals, said Flavio Pacca, a longtime associate of Witzel's who the governor-elect's press office said will join the administration. The shooters will work in pairs �� one to pull the trigger, one to monitor conditions and take video of deaths.
"The protocol will be to immediately neutralize, slaughter anyone who has a rifle," Witzel, a federal judge and former Brazilian marine, said Dec. 12. "Whoever has a rifle isn't worried about other people's lives; they're ready to eliminate anyone who crosses their path. This is a grave problem, not just in Rio de Janeiro, but also in other states."
Like President-elect Jair Bolsonaro, Witzel cruised to victory in October promising a brutal crackdown on criminals who make daily life a harrowing ordeal. Rio will be a proving ground for Bolsonaro's philosophy of maximum force and whether law enforcement devolves into a storm of extrajudicial killings.
Witzel declined interview requests and would not comment on the plan Pacca described.
Rio's homicides last year surged to an eight-year high of 5,346 and robberies and muggings have more than doubled since 2011. In February, President Michel Temer put the army in control of security through year-end and Witzel, as he takes over, intends to seek out the fight.
Witzel will create a security council that answers to him directly and envisions a web of surveillance and control. He plans public-private partnerships to purchase as many as 30,000 security cameras, according to his press office. This month, he traveled to Israel to visit two companies that work on drones. Pacca said the unmanned aircraft will take pictures of drug traffickers holding weapons so police will have evidence to arrest suspects when they emerge from their neighborhoods.
Pacca, a police officer himself and a regular attendee at Witzel's transition meetings, said groups of 20 policemen will begin undergoing monthlong marksman training as soon as March. After they can kill at 2,000 feet, they will typically clear the way into favelas, where many residents live under the sway of drug traffickers. Gangs often position roadblocks and lookouts to impede police and rival gangs.
Marksmen will alternate, with one shooting and one spotting targets and shooting video to prove that a person deserved killing, Pacca said. Society and jurists are shifting their views of what constitutes "imminent danger'' that justifies lethal force, he said, and targets don't need to be shooting.
"That concept is changing; it's not for nothing that Bolsonaro was elected, not for nothing that Witzel was elected,'' Pacca said. He referred to a jewelry-store thief who this month used an octogenarian as a human shield during his escape. As he stumbled, officers shot him dead at point-blank range. "The people gave the police an ovation. That's what you're going to see.''
Bolsonaro has said police officers who kill should be given medals and has promised that they will be legally protected. Soon after the election, video showed Rio police loading the limp, bleeding bodies of two young men accused of drug trafficking into the bed of a pick-up. Bystanders cheered, with one yelling Bolsonaro's name.
"The NGOs, human rights activists and United Nations will have a fit," Alexandre Frota, a congressman-elect, said on Twitter while sharing the video. "But the cleansing must be done.''
Even before Witzel, Rio police increasingly resorted to force. More people died at their hands during the first 11 months of 2018 than any year since state records begin in 2003. The 1,444 dead represent a 39 percent increase from 2017.
Not all are justified. On a rainy September day, a 26-year-old man awaited his wife and two children in their hillside favela that looks out over Copacabana beach. Police mistook his umbrella for a rifle and shot him, according to local press reports. He died on the way to a hospital.
"The Bolsonaro-Witzel duo is a concern for those who value democracy, value human rights, value the lives of people in the favelas." said Julita Lemgruber, coordinator of the Center for Security and Citizenship Studies at the city's Candido Mendes University.
Bolsonaro's office didn't respond to calls and messages seeking comment.
Gen. Richard Nunes, Rio's acting security secretary, said violence alone can't solve the problems and that the military has strengthened institutions and recovered operational capacity with training and new equipment. Since April, muggings, homicides and armed robbery of stores declined as soldiers became a constant presence, Nunes said.
"If we don't address public security with a broader vision, instead of thinking things get resolved by tactical, direct confrontation, the tendency is for indicators to worsen," Nunes said. He called the increase in police killings this year "totally undesirable and unexpected."
As long as police face few consequences for killing people, the cycle of violence will remain, according to Daniel Wilkinson, Americas managing director at Human Rights Watch.
"We're very concerned 2019 will only deteriorate further," Wilkinson said. "This isn't naivete about the problem; this comes from understanding what a serious problem this is for members of communities where you have gangs, and for police officers who have a very difficult job."
