Rio police targeting slum where gang based
Elite police units in borrowed navy tanks rumbled through a heavily fortified slum Thursday in an effort to apprehend drug gang leaders they blame for five days of widespread violence even as scores of armed youth fled the shantytown for a neighboring area.
Authorities say the gangs have erected roadblocks on major highways to rob motorists en masse, torched more than 40 cars and buses, and shot up police outposts, all to protest against a security program that has been pushing them from slums where they’ve held sway for decades.
The officers arrived under the cover of police helicopters and amid the constant rattle of high-caliber gunfire despite the gang members’ efforts to block access with burning vehicles.
But scores of gangsters were seen fleeing down jungle-covered hills, across an area known as “the green hell,” to a neighboring gang stronghold, the Alemao slum.
Is this impossible in the USA? Could things get this bad in our border cities and other border areas?
Well…. yes. If we let it happen.
We already have places where the federal government has placed signs warning civilians not to enter, areas along the US/Mexico border, in US territory.
November 29th, 2010 1:42 pm
Um, I don’t know if we’ll be hosting an Olympics along our Southwestern border anytime soon. Quit with the lame open border/ closed border arguments. Repeal NAFTA, and the maquiladora industry will shrink, along with the booming populations of the colonias.
BTW Comparing the federal warning signs placed around some of the border colonias to the ones you’ve (or I’ve) allegorically placed around the slums in Rio is kindofa stretch. A better symbolic sign-comparison might be the demarcating signs placed along the borders of our inner-city burbs, such as Pico-Union or Hyde Park.
That said, I think on a certain scale, “things” have occasionally gotten “this bad” for a long time (Rodney King?). We just don’t hear about it on TV as much as it is actually occurring, for marketing reasons.