‘They came to kill’: Rio’s deadliest favela police raid sparks calls for change Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Shaken, shoeless and with a gaping bullet wound to one of his feet, the young man staggered through Flávia Luciana’s front door at around 8am last Thursday as Rio’s decades-long drug conflict plumbed horrifying new depths.
“Help me! For the love of God! Help!” she remembers him pleading as he sought shelter inside.
It would be one of his last acts. About 30 minutes later, witnesses say a small group of police special forces appeared outside on Saint Manuel lane, a narrow alleyway at the heart of Jacarezinho, one of the city’s largest favelas.
As police used teargas and flashbangs on protesters outside the Brooklyn Center police department, young children listened, terrified, from their homes directly across the street. Among them were two eleven-year-old girls with autism, which makes them intensely sensitive to loud noises, their older sister, Jamiya Crayton, said. “It was so bad I had to go out there and ask [law enforcement] if they could stop doing that, because my kids were.