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### Viewing cable 08BRASILIA993, BRAZIL: IS THE MILITARY THE SOLUTION TO THE CRIME

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Reference ID | Created | Released | Classification | Origin
--- | --- | --- | --- | ---
08BRASILIA993 | 2008-07-21 20:12 | 2011-07-11 00:00 | UNCLASSIFIED | Embassy Brasilia

`

    VZCZCXRO2683
    RR RUEHRG
    DE RUEHBR #0993/01 2032012
    ZNR UUUUU ZZH
    R 212012Z JUL 08
    FM AMEMBASSY BRASILIA
    TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 2147
    INFO RUEHAC/AMEMBASSY ASUNCION 6988
    RUEHBU/AMEMBASSY BUENOS AIRES 5715
    RUEHLP/AMEMBASSY LA PAZ 6428
    RUEHMN/AMEMBASSY MONTEVIDEO 7479
    RUEHSG/AMEMBASSY SANTIAGO 0506
    RUEHRG/AMCONSUL RECIFE 8296
    RUEHRI/AMCONSUL RIO DE JANEIRO 6430
    RUEHSO/AMCONSUL SAO PAULO 2469
    RUEABND/DEA HQS WASHDC
    RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC
    RHEFHLC/HOMELAND SECURITY CENTER WASHINGTON DC
    RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHDC
    RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC
    RUEAWJA/DEPT OF JUSTICE WASHDC
    RHMCSUU/FBI WASHINGTON DC

` `

    UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 BRASILIA 000993

    SIPDIS

    FOR WHA, WHA/BSC, AND INL

    E.O. 12958: N/A
    TAGS: KCRM KJUS PGOV ASEC BR
    SUBJECT: BRAZIL: IS THE MILITARY THE SOLUTION TO THE CRIME
    PROBLEM?

    ¶1. (SBU) Summary:  Public concern in Brazil over steadily
    rising crime and a murder rate more than four times that in
    the United States has re-fueled a two-decade old debate over
    the question of deploying the military to undertake urban
    crime fighting missions.  Enthusiasm for this idea increased
    in the aftermath of the Pan Am games, when the military
    carried out a support role in providing security and helped
    prevent any incidents from marring the games.  Defense
    Minister Jobim, while not voicing outright support for the
    idea, has declined to rule it out.  Various polls have
    consistently shown public support it.  In mid-June, however,
    11 soldiers from an Army unit deployed to a Rio slum as
    security for a social project handed three youths over to
    drug traffickers, who subsequently killed them.  The incident
    has brought the debate over the military's proper internal
    role to the front pages of newspapers throughout the country.
     Despite a lower court ruling ordering the Army to withdraw
    from the "favela", Minister Jobim continues to argue that the
    Army was deployed legally and should not withdraw.  The
    debate over whether to deploy the military to take on crime
    in urban areas, which is already taking place in an ad-hoc
    fashion, will not be fully resolved until Congress addresses
    the matter legislatively.  Until then, the executive is
    likely to see internal military deployments as a tool too
    tempting and politically useful to forgo during public
    security crises.  End summary.

    --------------------------------------------- ----------
    Society at the Breaking Point, Something Must be Done
    --------------------------------------------- ----------

    ¶2. (U) President Lula took office during a record year for
    homicides, with some 51,000 recorded throughout Brazil in
    ¶2003.  Since then, the country has seen an eight percent
    reduction in homicides to about 46,600 in 2006, with drops of
    about 5.1 percent in 2004, 1.6 percent in 2005, and 1.9
    percent in 2006.  Nevertheless, the murder rate in Brazil is
    still on the order of 25 per 100,000 people, over four times
    the murder rate in the United States (according to the FBI's
    annual Crime in the United States report, the U.S. rate stood
    at 5.7 per 100,000 in 2006).  Newspapers earlier this year
    trumpeted the headline that total homicides during the last
    30 years are approaching the staggering figure of 1 million
    (in the 27 years from 1979 through the last year of released
    official data, the figure stood at approximately 900,000,
    compared with a little over 500,000 for the U.S. in the same
    time period).  Of these murders, almost half occurred in the
    ten-year period between 1997 and 2006 (compared to 165,000 in
    the United States).  Since 1991, homicide trends in Brazil
    and the U.S. have taken opposite courses: through 2006 the
    U.S. homicide rate had dropped 31 percent, while Brazil's
    rate increased 51 percent.

    ¶3. (U) Despite the drop in the absolute number of homicides
    during the first three years of the Lula administration, the
    number of homicides in most areas of the country remained
    flat or increased.  That is because most of the drop is
    attributable to a reduction in homicides in Sao Paulo, which
    alone is responsible for 70 percent of the drop in the
    homicide rate for Brazil since 2003.  Its homicide rate has
    fallen 54 percent during that time, from 5,591 total murders
    in 2003 to 2,546 in 2006, placing its homicide rate of 31 per
    100,000 people lowest among Brazil's 13 cities of more than
    one million inhabitants.  Major-city murder capital Recife
    (90.5), Belo Horizonte (56.6) Rio de Janeiro (44.8), Curitiba
    (44.7) and even Brasilia's metropolitan area (33.3) rank
    higher (according to the FBI the three U.S. cities with the
    highest homicide rates are Detroit (47), Baltimore (43), and
    New Orleans (37)).  (Note: Violent crime statistics are
    collected by state governments, which have unreliable systems
    for data collection and in many instances do not keep track
    of some forms of violent crime or do not report these to the
    central government. As a result, they are often difficult or
    impossible to find, and where they exist, they are less

    BRASILIA 00000993  002 OF 004

    reliable than U.S. statistics.  End note.)

    --------------------------------------
    Time for the Military to Step In?
    --------------------------------------

    ¶4. (U) As a result of these flat or increasing rates of
    homicides in most parts of the country, not to mention the
    constant barrage of TV and newspaper headlines blaring news
    of often shocking and brutal criminal acts, fears of violent
    crime remains consistently top the list of concerns for most
    Brazilians. In addition, many Brazilians believe that the
    Military Police (regular uniformed police of each state with
    a "military" rank structure) is corrupt and lacks the
    firepower to take on organized crime networks and
    drug-trafficking gangs.  This is reflected in polling that
    shows widespread and steady support for an increased role by
    Brazil's armed forces in providing public security.
    According to a 2005 survey the daily newspaper O Globo, 90
    percent of the public favored a military role; in a 2007
    survey reported weekly newsmagazine Veja, support remained
    strong and steady at 88 percent, a preference that is helped
    by high public confidence in the military, which hovers
    around then 70 percent mark.  Even a poll of service members
    that appeared in the same edition of Veja showed that some 63
    percent either supported or are at least open to the idea of
    deploying the military internally, depending on the
    situation.  Media outlets often fuel debate by questioning
    the presence of 190,000 soldiers posted to bases in urban
    areas, when there are no evident national defense missions to
    perform in those areas.

    ¶5. (U) Since Minister Nelson Jobim took over the Defense
    portfolio, he and various commanders have openly contemplated
    the idea of involving the military in urban crime fighting
    missions, lauding the military's preparedness to taking on
    that role.  Colonel Claudio Barro Magno Filho, commander of
    the Brazilian troops in the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti
    (MINUSTAH) was quoted in the daily newspaper Estado de Sao
    Paulo in 2007 noting that the peacekeeping mission was
    serving as a laboratory to put into practice the planning
    that had been done for similar operations that might be put
    in place within Brazil.  He noted that under the right
    conditions--political support and integration of all law
    enforcement entities on the ground--the Brazilian military
    could succeed in carrying out anti-crime operations similar
    to those it was undertaking under MINUSTAH.  During an April
    9 hearing before the Chamber of Deputies, Jobim suggested
    that such a role for the military could be considered, but
    only after an improved legal framework allowing such
    deployments was passed in Congress.

    ¶6. (U) The idea of using the military in this way is far from
    new.  At the end of the military regime more than two decades
    ago the military suffered an identity crisis as its influence
    waned and elected democratic civilian governments
    consolidated their power, but the topic remained hotly
    debated within the Brazilian military and civilian society.
    Since then the military has been enlisted to act internally
    several dozen times, usually in limited short-term missions
    such as protecting heads of state attending the Rio Earth
    Summit in 1992 and the Mercosul Summit in Rio in 2006, and
    occasionally, as in Operation Rio in 1994, to combat
    organized crime and drug traffickers.

    ¶7. (U) The Lula government has approved military deployments
    for internal security purposes several times since it came to
    power in 2003.  That year, at the request of the Rio de
    Janeiro state government, it approved the use of the military
    to augment police patrols.  In 2006, under a judicial
    warrant, the military was allowed to occupy eight favelas to
    retrieve weapons stolen from the military compound.  Most
    recently, the Army helped support security preparations for
    the Pan American games in 2007 at the request of Rio State

    BRASILIA 00000993  003 OF 004

    Governor Sergio Cabral (a strong Lula ally).  Prior to the
    Pan Am games, Justice Minister Tarso Genro affirmed that the
    military could act in public security without violating the
    constitution in their role as guarantors of law and order,
    and as long as its mission was well defined, limited in
    duration, and agreed to by the governor of the state in which
    they would be present.

    ¶8. (U) In fact, in part because of the numerous occasions for
    which it had been called to deploy internally, in 2004 the
    Army converted the 11th Brigade of the Southeast Military
    Command based out of Campinas, Sao Paulo into a light
    infantry brigade with a formal "guarantee of law and order"
    or "GLO" mission.  Now known informally as the "Brigada GLO,"
    it specializes in urban conflict, use of non-lethal
    munitions, and anti-riot actions, and is trained to undertake
    operations against narcotraffickers and organized crime.

    ----------------------
    A Bump in the Road
    ----------------------

    ¶9. (U) On June 16th, 2008, three youths between the ages of
    17 and 24 years old from the "Morro da Providencia", a favela
    in Rio de Janeiro, were killed by drug traffickers after
    being abducted by Army soldiers deployed to the favela, who
    "sold" them to rival drug dealers.  Eleven officers from the
    Western Military Command were involved, and three of them
    have already confessed their participation in the crime.  The
    Brazilian Army had been occupying the "Morro da Providencia"
    for six months to provide security for workers of the
    Programa Cimento Social (Social Cement Program), an
    initiative of current federal deputy and Rio mayoral
    candidate Marcelo Crivella.  The State Secretary of Public
    Security, Jose Beltrame, as well as the Brazilian Bar
    Association have strongly criticized the presence of the
    Brazilian Army in the favela, claiming they have no expertise
    in public security.  A lower court judged ruled that the Army
    had to exit the favela, a decision the federal government is
    appealing.  Both Jobim and Army Chief of Staff General Enzo
    Peri have defended the legality of the Army's presence and
    its mission, which was to provide security so that a social
    development project could be completed in an economically
    distressed area dominated by drug traffickers.  (Note:
    Without military protection, the social project has been
    suspended.)

    ¶10. (SBU)  Though the federal military,s presence in Rio in
    the lead-up to the 2007 Pan Am Games was publicly heralded as
    a success, many Consulate contacts (including state public
    security officials) have expressed their view that the
    deployment did not have any lasting positive effect on the
    security situation.  Rather, they say, the military
    deployment in advance of the Games was a calculated political
    move on the part of the new Governor to counter Rio,s
    negative reputation as a dangerous city.  The military, along
    with state police forces, conducted several high-profile
    "raids" in favelas to send drug traffickers the message that
    the Pan Am Games needed to take place without incident.  Rio
    was uncharacteristically calm during the Games, but returned
    to "normal" shortly after the international delegations and
    tourists departed.

    ¶11. (SBU) A significant consequence of the military,s
    presence in Rio,s favelas is that corrupt members of the
    military have become part of the problem.  Corrupt soldiers
    terrorize residents and demand protection money.  Some
    Consulate NGO contacts report that the security situation in
    the favelas has actually deteriorated since the military's
    deployment because now there are several competing elements
    jockeying for power-- drug traffickers, corrupt local police
    (militias), and corrupt soldiers.  In many cases, residents
    are pressured and threatened by all of these groups.

    BRASILIA 00000993  004 OF 004

    -----------------------
    A Risky Proposition
    -----------------------

    ¶12. (U) Even before the incidents in Rio, some defense
    experts had sounded a note of caution towards the idea of
    deploying the military in this way, noting that training for
    war and to provide public security were incompatible and that
    the legacy of two decades of military repression still
    lingered in people's minds  In a meeting with poloff
    Joanisval Brito, a Senate legislative advisor and that body's
    leading expert on national defense issues, stated that it
    would be unwise to employ the military for anything other
    than temporary and limited missions, such as emergency
    response or providing security for international events--
    which are already allowable under current law.  Open-ended
    public security missions are fraught with risks, he noted,
    because they have the potential of corrupting the
    military--eroding confidence in it--and require wholesale
    changes in training, doctrine, and in Brazilian laws.  The
    only way the Congress could see itself pressured into
    allowing such actions would be for Brazil to suffer a
    continuous series of high-profile incidents of such shocking
    nature that the Congress would have no choice but to act to
    provide broad authority for these types of missions.

    ----------
    Comment
    ----------

    ¶13. (SBU) For the moment, the pendulum has swung against
    deploying the military for these kinds of domestic missions.
    Once the next wave of high-profile criminal acts takes place,
    however, it will probably swing back again.  There is no
    constitutional question as to whether the military may deploy
    for internal security purposes, as that is already allowed by
    the constitution.  The issue Brazilians are grappling with is
    how broadly these internal missions may be defined. Settling
    this question is essential to formalize a legal regime
    allowing for the systematic use of the military in a range of
    public security roles, in place of the current haphazard and
    ad hoc use of the military whenever public pressure to do
    something about crime builds to the boiling point. It is not
    clear that Brazil's congress is prepared to act on the matter
    at this point.  Until then, the pendulum will keep swinging
    with the headlines of the day.  We doubt that any Brazilian
    government will permanently rule out deploying the military
    for internal security purposes so long as it remains a
    temptingly simple, popular, and politically useful tool for
    addressing public security crises.  End comment.

    SOBEL

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