A heavily armed police raid in the Jacarezinho favela of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Thursday resulted in at least 28 deaths and many wounded. It was the deadliest police raid and the second deadliest massacre in Rio’s history. The police said they were executing arrest and search warrants against alleged drug traffickers. Residents washed away pools of blood after police officers, supported by armored personnel carriers and helicopters, used automatic weapons and explosives into the densely populated residential neighborhood.
Fogo Cruzado, a research institute that tracks armed violence in Rio de Janeiro, reported that 38 people have been killed in Jacarezinho during police raids since July 2016, constituting 83 percent of all gun homicides in the area. Last year, police in the state of Rio killed 1,239 people, an average of three per day, according to official data. Nearly 80 percent of Brazilians killed by Rio’s police are Black and brown, despite representing only about half of the population.