{"text":[[{"start":8.49,"text":"Crime-weary residents of Rio de Janeiro strongly support the bloody police operation that resulted in a record 121 deaths this week, according to a new poll, which found they want drastic action against the gun-toting cartels controlling the city’s favelas."}],[{"start":26.83,"text":"About 2,500 military police stormed two of Rio’s most dangerous neighbourhoods on Tuesday, seeking to arrest leaders of the Comando Vermelho, the city’s most powerful drug cartel. After a fierce battle, in which criminals dropped bombs from drones, images of dozens of bodies laid out in a street were flashed around the world."}],[{"start":51.72,"text":"The operation’s brutality shocked human rights advocates and Brazil’s leftwing government, but São Paulo-based pollsters AtlasIntel found that 62 per cent of Rio residents supported the police action. The figure rose to 88 per cent among those living in the city’s favelas."}],[{"start":72.91,"text":"More than half of the 1,527 respondents said they had personally witnessed a gun battle in the past three months."}],[{"start":82.99,"text":"“It’s no use feeling sorry for these people,” said an Uber driver in the city, granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive subject, of those killed in the police operation. “All of them would kill or steal if they had the chance.” He said he had been mugged 12 times at gunpoint in the city."}],[{"start":103.88999999999999,"text":"Andrei Roman, chief executive of AtlasIntel, said the gangs’ extreme violence and immorality had left favela dwellers feeling “scared, abandoned by the state and without hope”."}],[{"start":117.07999999999998,"text":"“As impunity reigns even in the most horrific of cases — assassinations, torture, rapes — they have come to believe that radical solutions are needed to punish, scare and ideally eliminate those who have destroyed their communities,” he told the Financial Times."}],[{"start":136.40999999999997,"text":"Just 34 per cent of all Rio residents disapproved of the operation masterminded by conservative state governor Cláudio Castro, according to AtlasIntel. The poll was carried out in the two days after the raid."}],[{"start":152.00999999999996,"text":"When respondents were shown a photo of dozens of bodies laid out in the street after the operation, the most common reaction was that it was “a legitimate response to crime”. Only 5 per cent responded with “indignation and injustice”."}],[{"start":168.69999999999996,"text":"“An operation like this sends a good message to the city’s youth,” said a maid who lives in the city’s poor northern suburbs, where gun battles are frequent. “Now I can tell my son: ‘Stay away from crime or you’ll end up as a body lying in the street like this.’”"}],[{"start":187.08999999999997,"text":"Four rightwing state governors joined a meeting in Rio on Thursday to show support for the raid. Tarcísio de Freitas, governor of Brazil’s most populous state São Paulo and a possible presidential contender next year, said Castro had “acted very well”."}],[{"start":208.03999999999996,"text":"Rob Muggah, a political scientist and security expert in Rio, said that despite popular support in a conservative society, such “heavy-handed responses” would not take down the cartels."}],[{"start":221.43999999999997,"text":"“No amount of firepower will reduce the capacity of the Comando Vermelho,” he said, adding that he was concerned by how quickly the operation had been politicised. “When you use indiscriminate force, with a war mentality among the police, you destroy the intelligence and the evidence you need.” He noted that several gang leaders had escaped capture."}],[{"start":246.72999999999996,"text":"Brazil’s supreme court has ordered Castro to face interrogation over the raid next week, and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva sent his human rights minister Macaé Evaristo to speak to residents of one of the affected favelas as they grieved their dead."}],[{"start":266.10999999999996,"text":"Evaristo rejected Castro’s verdict that, apart from the four police officers who were killed, the operation was a “success”. The fight against organised crime needed to target cartel bosses, instead of “exposing children, the elderly and people with disabilities to such terror”, she said."}],[{"start":287.23999999999995,"text":"Lula was forced to apologise after saying last week that drug “users are responsible for traffickers, who are the victims of the users too”. Hours later, the 80-year-old leftist withdrew his remarks, saying he had misspoken."}],[{"start":303.56999999999994,"text":"With Lula running for re-election in next year’s presidential election, the right sees an opportunity to attack him as weak on crime. Former hard-right president Jair Bolsonaro’s son Flávio, a Rio senator, posted last week that he was “envious” of US defence secretary Pete Hegseth’s lethal missile attacks on speedboats carrying drugs in the Caribbean."}],[{"start":328.85999999999996,"text":"In the meantime, Rio’s crime-weary residents want tough action."}],[{"start":333.79999999999995,"text":"Pedro (not his real name), a doorman at a block of flats in the wealthy Leblon neighbourhood, said he personally disagreed with the bloody police tactics. “But I’ve heard residents in the building saying: ‘It’s a shame the police only killed 100. They should have killed 500.’”"}],[{"start":359.31999999999994,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1762129486_1517.mp3"}