Andreazza:"The problem of public security is a Brazilian one, and the fight against it must be focused on the borders."

10:55 This week's massive police operation in Rio de Janeiro has reignited the debate about effective measures to mitigate and contain the advance of organized crime in Brazil. The authorities' offensive ended with 121 dead. There were 113 arrests, but one of the main targets of the operation - Edgar Alves de Andrade, alias Doca, the main leader of the Comando Vermelho (CV) in the region - was not captured and is on the run.

The debate involves, especially, the advance in national and international territory of CV and Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), the two main Brazilian factions.

The complexity of criminal organizations' operations is one of the greatest challenges. This involves their permeability across different spheres (with financial and even political influence), economic diversity (beyond drug trafficking), expansion into all regions (including the interior of the country and abroad), and Brazil's territorial characteristics (extension and difficulty of access), among other factors.

According to experts interviewed by Estadão, violent mega-operations like the one in Rio do not have significant effectiveness, in addition to impacting the population at the epicenter of the action.

“Brazil has been doing this for a long time, and it can’t end organized crime,” says Aiala Colares Couto, a researcher at the Brazilian Forum on Public Security.

So what should be done? Intelligence, cooperation between different agencies, and mitigation actions are among the suggested paths forward.

Here are some of the main areas of focus:

1 - Cooperation between bodies from all levels of government

Today, information related to criminal organizations is scattered. This is partly due to the diverse activities that factions carry out across much of the territory, but also to the fragmented responsibilities of public bodies at different levels (mainly between federal and state), which decentralize relevant data, investigations, and punishments.

The fragmentation makes it difficult to understand the complexity of the factions' actions. Experts believe there are even constitutional challenges to greater integration between different spheres of power, with overlapping jurisdictions.

“It becomes a game of ‘passing the buck,’ because the federal government takes care of the border, while the state government takes care of the ‘base of society,’” says Marcos Alan Ferreira, a researcher of illicit markets and transnational threats and professor at the Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB).

According to him, there is a lack of connection even within the same spheres:"Funai (responsible for indigenous peoples) and the Ministry of the Environment play an important role in border regions and have little communication with police forces."

He mentions that, at times, technicians from ICMBio - the federal agency that manages environmental conservation units - have a better understanding of which factions control certain areas of the Amazon than the local police themselves.

Aiala Colares Couto, a Geography professor at the State University of Pará (Uepa), speaks of a “federal pact” to integrate public security forces. “There is drug trafficking integrated with timber smuggling, mineral smuggling, arms trafficking, money laundering... It's an economic integration of illegal circuits. But the State is unable to work from this perspective,” she says.

A positive example in this regard is the recent Operation Hidden Carbon, which investigated fraud and money laundering by organized crime through the formal economy. The operation became especially known for having reached even companies on Avenida Faria Lima, the country's main financial center.

This experience involved cooperation between many public bodies and spheres of power, something unprecedented in recent times. Among them were the Federal Revenue Service, the Civil and Military Police (state agencies), the National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels (ANP), and the Federal and State Public Prosecutor's Offices of São Paulo.

Governors have been demanding greater federal involvement in public security, a responsibility currently concentrated in the states. This month, the Minister of Justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, presented an anti-gang bill that envisions creating a National Database of Criminal Organizations, increasing penalties for leaders, and infiltrating fictitious agents and companies into gangs.

2 - Investigation, intelligence and ‘follow the money’

Due to its size, difficulty of access, and the adaptability of organizations, experts consider it difficult to monitor the entire Brazilian border. Even traditional routes have undergone changes, so there are several paths available.

“Organized crime is always adapting and renewing itself. There isn’t just the Solimões Route (referring to one of the main Amazonian waterways) as it is today. Today there are four or five entry points, through Colombia, Acre, Peru, Bolivia…”, says Gabriel Funari, director of the Observatory of Illicit Economies in the Amazon Region at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

Furthermore, organized crime possesses various resources to circumvent the State, such as clandestine airstrips, drones, and access to the remote internet network (Starlink). The state structure, however, is unable to provide an adequate response.

“With technological advancements, satellite imagery reveals deforestation for coca cultivation,” the researcher exemplifies. The question is how to reach these remote places with limited resources? It requires money and bureaucratic capacity,” Funari adds.

Marcos Alan Ferreira, from UFPB, says that, unlike terrorism, for example, which has an ideological bias, organized crime operates with a different objective: profit. The challenge, however, is the complexity of this chain.

Therefore, there is talk of the need for investigations that encompass the full scope of these organizations' activities. In this sense, tracing the money trail is a key element to be identified.

“There’s a lot of money involved, which means that, in organizational terms, it has influence on politics, the economy, society, government institutions, and so on,” says Aiala Colares Couto. Therefore, according to him, raids in favelas alone are not enough. “The economic agents of organized crime are not in the favela territories,” he says.

The researcher points out that there is a "superstructure" outside the periphery."The favela, due to abandonment or precarious conditions and the denial of rights, has become a strategic stronghold for organized crime to manifest itself in a territorialized way."

3- Transnational investigations and strategic cities

Greater data and intelligence sharing is also needed with other countries, especially those neighboring the main routes, such as Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, and Paraguay."In the context of the Amazon, these are transboundary problems, not just problems of one country," emphasizes Gabriel Funari.

“It’s essential to adapt to the reality of current crime: when the factions emerged, they were based on drug trafficking; today, they are not based solely on that,” he says. “Looking at financial flows at an international level, at this intelligence on how Comando Vermelho is laundering drug trafficking money in Peru, in Colombia, at an international level. This relatively basic intelligence is something we don’t have,” he exemplifies.

The researcher mentions that there are many criminals from Brazilian organizations imprisoned in Colombia, and that greater cooperation could help in tracing the money trail of criminal activities, for example.

On the other hand, UFPB professor Marcos Alan Ferreira points out that Brazil is the country with the greatest financial capacity in South America, while some of its neighbors experience greater"institutional imbalance."

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Even so, it mentions the Amazon International Police Cooperation Center (CCPI Amazônia) as an initiative that seeks coordination. The center was inaugurated in September, with a structure that should bring together the Federal Police, the Federal Highway Police, the National Force, police forces from the nine states of the Legal Amazon, police authorities from Amazonian countries, and international organizations.

Furthermore, although the actions of these organizations change and adapt, one can consider experiences focused on strategic locations. That is, areas that are important for the organizations' logistics and that form the basis of their activities, including influence over local authorities – many located on borders.

A well-known example is the tri-border area between Brazil, Peru, and Colombia, which has been crucial for Comando Vermelho to establish itself as a"transnational" organization and also as a revenue-generating hub. It is in the Javari Valley that it has come to dominate the supply chain, with the planting of coca and subsequent processing of cocaine, coupled even with the raising of pirarucu fish, for example.

4 - Measures against poverty and inequality in vulnerable areas

Various studies show how organized crime uses, in part,"labor" from vulnerable areas where there is an "absence of the State." In these cases, the actions of the factions further aggravate this scenario, with an increase in drug use, prostitution, and violence in general.

Today, the most violent cities in the country are located in strategic areas controlled by organized crime (in the North and Northeast), as shown in the yearbooks of the Brazilian Forum on Public Security. Therefore, there is also talk of the importance of actions aimed at mitigating and preventing socioeconomic impacts.

Gabriel Funari cites a pilot program by the Ministry of Justice in Tabatinga (AM) aimed at curbing the influence of organized crime in indigenous communities. This ranges from social assistance to training for insertion into the job market – an example being the Center for Access to Rights and Social Inclusion in Drug Policy (CAIS) for Indigenous Peoples.

Marcos Alan Ferreira, from UFPB, also cites the example of the Peace Factories, where multifunctional facilities (health, education, sports, leisure, assistance, etc.) were built in vulnerable areas of Pará and are said to have contributed to a reduction in violence."It's a policy that isn't just about policing." This doesn't mean, however, that the initiative doesn't require adjustments to scale up.

5 - To restore the credibility and influence of the State in dominated areas.

There is a dichotomy between governance and governability when it comes to organized crime. In strategic locations, the rules of conduct are imposed by factions, and even those who have no connection to the factions know what they must follow. Furthermore, some of the members at the base of the organizations are locals, known within the community.

According to Marcos Alan Ferreira, from UFPB, these"unwritten norms" expose a weakening of governments and can even generate a "positive image" of criminal organizations in areas of greater vulnerability, where basic public services do not reach them with the necessary efficiency.

“In Rio de Janeiro, there is a lack of faith in the State,” he says. In part, this is also due to the way security forces have been acting: “It’s the mother who saw her son running from gunfire or who couldn’t study because the police entered the favela,” he points out. “When the State enters the favela only with brutal repressive apparatus, this generates a feeling that public power does not protect them. It strengthens the acceptance of crime locally,” he adds.

6 - Isolation of leaders

Prisons act as recruitment grounds for gangs, and to prevent this, experts advocate isolating criminal leaders.

According to Marcos Alan Ferreira, actions in this direction – coupled with a “financial strangulation” of the organizations – can have a greater impact than a mega police operation like the most recent one, which mainly targeted criminals who were only at the “base of the structure”.