With just less than two weeks left before the World Cup kicks off, Rio de Janeiro has reportedly seen a spike in shootings of police officers accompanied by a rise in muggings and homicides in the city that would be hosting an expected 9,00,000 visitors.
Crime wave is reportedly setting nerves on edge across Rio as at least 110 officers have been shot in the city so far this year, which shows an increase of nearly 40 percent from the same period last year, according to figures compiled independently by the Brazilian journalist Roberta Trindade with the help of police officers.
According to The New York Times, with the World Cup just around the corner Rio had been expected to showcase a safer city on the global stage, but instead there has been an increase in numbers of officers being shot to death, some being on-duty and some being off-duty officers.
Trindade recorded 14 shootings of police officers, including two who were killed, during a 16-day stretch in May, and said that altogether, at least 30 on-duty and off-duty police officers have been shot dead this year.
Security forces in Rio have reportedly been trying to reclaim territory in the city from the control of heavily armed drug gangs, and until recently, deployment of special teams called Pacifying Police Units in dozens of Brazilian slums was viewed as a major achievement.
However, the officers have reportedly come under increasing attack in these 'pacified' favelas and the security gains are gradually being destroyed.
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State officials in Rio have reportedly turned to the national government for help, asking for 5,300 troops from the armed forces to help patrol the streets, as they acknowledge that the city's stretched police force would not be able to guarantee security for the World Cup.
A senior security official of the state government Roberto Sa said that they are still distant from the earlier levels of criminality, adding that there are areas where an actual war had to be waged just for the police to enter, and now the police can do so without so many personnel because drug traffickers are losing their territorial bases.