70 Die in 4 Days of Violence in Brazil

[ethics]

Prison riots and attacks on police by a criminal gang extended into Monday, raising the reported death toll to 70 in four days of violence that has started to choke normal life in South America's largest city.

All I will say is can you imagine something like this in the US? It would be broadcast all over the world with a certain Schadenfreude feel to it.

Alas! It's Brazil this time. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060515/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/brazil_police_attacked;_ylt=AhzpyT5ZSlr5yDZSNDjRirMDW7oF;_yl u=X3oDMTBhZDhxNDFzBHNlYwNtZW5ld3M-)

[ethics]

Toll is now 115. (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/17/world/americas/17brazil.html)

[Coot]

The news media here said the violence ceased after the overwhelmed police authorities met Sunday with the leader of the powerful organized crime group that orchestrated the onslaught, who was reported to have ordered a truce by cellphone from his prison cell.

But both sides later denied striking any deal. "The government did not submit to any demands or requests," Marco Antônio Desgualdo, director general of the state's civil police force, said in an interview on Tuesday. "The police did not negotiate."

Government officials also dismissed local news reports that the police had used the crisis to kill suspects they had previously singled out as gang members. A police crackdown during the battles led to the arrest of more than 100 suspected gang members and the killing of 71.

While most of the dead were suspected of being criminals, some 40 police officers were also killed, and the scale of the fighting has prompted many to question an already shaky faith in Brazil's public security forces.

Likely both things are true. The police did negotiate and they did deliberately target gang members for assassination.