License-to-Kill Policing to Get a Trial Run in Rio de Janeiro
- The state’s governor has promised gunmen will face ‘slaughter’
- City and its slums are a test case for Brazil as a whole
Brazilian military on patrol in Jacarezinho favela.
Photographer: Carl de Souza/AFP via Getty Images
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Teams of marksmen next year will patrol swaths of Rio de Janeiro with high-powered weapons and a license to kill, said a security adviser to Governor-elect Wilson Witzel.
As many as 120 sharpshooters will accompany police incursions into the slums of Brazil’s postcard city to exterminate gun-toting criminals, according to Flavio Pacca, a longtime associate of Witzel who the governor-elect’s press office said will join the administration. The shooters will work in pairs -- one to pull the trigger, one to monitor conditions and videotape deaths.