Brazil’s Military Takeover Of Security In Rio De Janeiro Is A Looming Disaster

SÃO PAULO ― Brazilian President Michel Temer made the unprecedented decision Friday to give the country’s military all public security responsibilities in Rio de Janeiro, the beleaguered city that has been plagued by rising rates of violent crime since it hosted the Olympic Games nearly two years ago.

Temer’s decision will put the military in near-total control of security in Rio through the end of the year, marking the first time a Brazilian president has mobilized the armed forces to take over a city or state’s public security efforts since the country’s military dictatorship ended in 1985.

The announcement has sent shockwaves across country, where the prospect of any sort of military intervention is already an unsettling topic for many, and yet Temer argued in an official statement and again on television Friday that it was the only possible maneuver still available in a desperate time for both Rio and Brazil.

After nearly a decade of declining crime rates, Rio has seen a dramatic spike in violent crimes and homicides in the past two years. In 2016, the Rio state was home to more than 5,000 homicides, including nearly 1,000 killings committed by police.

Though it is far from Brazil’s most violent area, the second-largest but most prominent city in the country has become a barometer for the nation as a whole, which saw its number of homicides increase nearly 4 percent, to roughly 62,000, in 2016. (By comparison, in 2016, there were around 17,000 homicides in the United States, which has roughly 100 million more people than Brazil.)

There were another 688 shootings in Rio in January, but it is no coincidence that Temer made the announcement last week, at the close of Carnival. As the annual pre-Lent festival ended, videos of tourists being beaten and robbed on Rio’s streets and beaches circulated online and on Brazilian cable news, driving home the perception that violence in the city had spiraled out of control.

There is no doubt that Rio and Brazil in general are in dire need of a policy shift  to address the outbreaks of violence.

But there is little reason for optimism that Temer’s plan to send in the big guns of the Brazilian military will work, and the concerns around his decision are plentiful and obvious. Most notably, allowing the military to take control of Rio for up to 10 months raises pertinent questions about the health of Brazil’s democracy some three decades after the end of the country’s military dictatorship: Since his announcement, there has been open worry in Rio and across Brazil that Temer’s military intervention could be a test run for more aggressive military involvement in policing and public security in the future.

And Temer’s escalation in policing is happening in a state with one of the deadliest police forces in a country with one of the world’s deadliest police forces. It’s folly, human rights groups and security experts say, to think the move will do anything but add to the bloodshed and put the lives and rights of Rio’s poorest and most vulnerable residents at even greater risk.

“It is the equivalent of a public-policy ‘Hail Mary,’ and the results are far from certain,” said Dr. Robert Muggah, a co-founder of the Igarapé Institute, a Rio-based public security think tank. “There is a real danger of militarizing public security in Rio de Janeiro even further.”