Rio de Janeiro activist Raulii Santiago was mad enough when police officials announced they had bagged and tagged around 60 suspected members of a drug gang in a massive Tuesday raid on the neighborhoods of Penha and Complexo de Alemao. “We saw executed people: shot in the back, shots to the head, stab wounds, people tied up. This level of brutality, the hatred spread – there’s no other way to describe it except as a massacre,” Santiago told the Associated Press on Wednesday.
That was before Rio state police secretary Felipe Curi revised the toll up to 115 after saying another few dozen bodies had been located after the operation involving over 2,500 cops and soldiers had ended. Four cops were also killed in the raid, which cuffed at least 118 still-living suspects and seized 93 rifles and more than half a ton of drugs from the gang known as the “Red Command.”