The unprecedented and bloody police mega-operation that took place yesterday in the northern part of Rio de Janeiro, in the Alemão and Penha complexes, left at least 132 dead, of whom 115 were alleged members of Comando Vermelho, considered the most powerful criminal organization in the city, and four police officers. Now, several hours later, more details of the operation are beginning to emerge, which authorities described as the biggest blow in the history of the criminal group.

The Secretary of Military Police, Marcelo Menezes, in statements to O’Globo, gave previously unknown details: The operation involved the deployment of 2,500 uniformed personnel and was the result of 60 days of planning.

According to the statement, the Special Operations Battalion (Bope) established an “impenetrable wall” in the wooded area surrounding the favelas, traditionally used as an escape route by criminals. Meanwhile, other battalions advanced from different access points, pushing the suspects into uninhabited areas.

Menezes stated that those who chose to surrender were arrested and that most of the fighting took place in dense vegetation, far from homes. “Most of the fighting occurred in the wooded area where our troops were positioned, and it was a choice made by the criminals,” Menezes said.

The operation, which also involved agents from the Special Action Group Against Organized Crime (GAECO), had as its main objective the execution of arrest warrants against members of the Comando Vermelho. Authorities emphasized that the tactic of displacing the conflict into the forest was a response to the need to protect the community's inhabitants. Today, those civilians were the ones who recovered more than 60 bodies from the undergrowth.

The Secretary of Public Security, Victor Santos, stated in declarations toEstadao that the high lethality was a foreseeable, although undesired, outcome, and that the decision not to use aircraft sought to avoid exposing agents in hostile terrain.

Santos insisted that, with the exception of the slain police officers, all the fatalities were criminals, arguing that the presence of innocent people in the wooded area during the operation was unlikely. “You can’t identify an innocent person wearing camouflage clothing or a bulletproof vest,” he quipped.

The Secretary of the Civil Police, Felipe Curi, reinforced the official position by displaying images captured by the body cameras of officers injured during the clashes. Curi described the operation as “the biggest blow that Comando Vermelho has received since its founding in the 1970s” and emphasized the magnitude of the loss of weapons, drugs, and leaders for the organization.

Furthermore, he criticized the federal government's stance, alluding to recent statements by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva regarding the victim status of drug traffickers, as well as the controversy generated by a post from rapper Oruam, son of Marcinho VP, who stated that"if you take the rifle out of someone's hand, there is a human being." "Today everyone is a victim. The trafficker has become a victim of the user. And the police officer is being treated as a villain, when the police officer is the hero," Curi asserted.

Authorities also rejected the possibility of using the National Force in these types of operations, arguing that it lacks the necessary expertise and that, on previous occasions, it had to be rescued when attempting to enter conflict zones. Curi argued that, in areas dominated by crime, increased intelligence work necessarily leads to more armed confrontations.

The Comando Vermelho, with a dominant presence in Rio de Janeiro since the 1970s, has been responsible for recurring episodes of violence in the city's favelas. Police operations in these areas often generate intense debates about human rights and the use of lethal force, especially when the number of victims reaches such high figures as in this case.

Amid the controversy and international comparisons, one of those responsible for the operation launched a defiant message: “I challenge anyone here to call Scotland Yard, the CIA, Mossad, the FBI, or even NASA, because nobody can do what we did.”