JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
One day after a deadly police raid in Rio de Janeiro that left more than 130 people dead, two very different stories are emerging. Rio state government is calling the operation involving thousands of officers a major success in its fight against one of the largest and most powerful drug gangs in Brazil. But residents of some of the poorest working-class neighborhoods where that deadly raid took place are calling the action a state-sponsored massacre. NPR's Carrie Kahn reports from Rio de Janeiro.
CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: The initial death toll in the Rio raid numbered around 64 people. That was before residents say they found dozens of bodies in a hillside ravine.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Portuguese).
KAHN: All night long, they've been bringing the bodies onto the main street of the Penha complex, one of the two favelas, working-class neighborhoods, raided by some 2,500 civilian and military police.
There's quite a scene here in the neighborhood. Right in the middle of the street, there are bodies in body bags and people lined up on either sides...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking Portuguese).
KAHN: ...Hoping to recognize them, identify their family members.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking Portuguese).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Speaking Portuguese).
KAHN: A man yells for the crowd to make space for the refrigerated trucks from Rio's morgue that's come to pick up the bodies.
(SOUNDBITE OF TRUCK DOORS BANGING)
KAHN: But as they're loaded and taken away, residents' anger surges.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (Speaking Portuguese).
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Speaking Portuguese).
KAHN: Jessica Marques, who lives in the neighborhood, says the gun battle was terrifying, lasting hours.
JESSICA MARQUES: (Speaking Portuguese).
KAHN: "Residents in other parts of the city would have never been able to endure 10 minutes of what we experienced here for 17 hours," she says.
Police say they encountered stiff resistance from the well-armed Red Command gang when they came to serve hundreds of warrants. More than 100 people were arrested, nearly 100 rifles and more than a half ton of drugs were seized according to authorities. Videos of the gun battle showed heavy firepower and weaponized drones used by the gang to drop bombs on officers. But residents, including Raquel Viera, a mother of two and a house cleaner, called the operation a state-sponsored massacre.
RAQUEL VIERA: (Speaking Portuguese).
KAHN: "What we see here is practically the death penalty," she says. "Why didn't they just take the boys to jail?" She says that many may have chosen a life of crime and have to pay for that, but not like this, she says.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Chanting in Portuguese).
KAHN: Dozens of angry residents start chanting justice, justice as they head up the hillside of the favela into the wooded area where they say dozens of bodies were left by police. Luiz Pessoa dos Santos, a local activist in the Penha neighborhood, says residents were blocked from retrieving the bodies, which he says numbered at least 70. They had to pull them out of the ravine and bring them into the main square. He blames the state for not doing more for Rio's poor when they were alive.
LUIZ PESSOA DOS SANTOS: (Speaking Portuguese).
KAHN: "They never did anything to improve our community, to give better opportunities to our youth," he says.
State law enforcement officials say residents tampered with evidence and removed clothing from the bodies found in the ravine. Rio's Police Secretary Felipe Curi says there will be an investigation.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
FELIPE CURI: (Speaking Portuguese).
KAHN: "Let's be clear, the only victims," he says, "were the four police officers who died. The rest were criminals."
Carrie Kahn, NPR News, Rio de Janeiro.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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