Human Security Centre Human Rights and International Security Research
By Sam Biden, Junior Fellow
11 January, 2026
Emergence of Favela-based Organized Crime Groups
From the late 1970s through the 80s, Rio’s favelas became sites of expanding civil society organization amid Brazil’s gradual transition away from military rule, following the collapse of the 21-year long coup in 1985. Supported by the US in an attempt to cease Brazil converting into a communist state, then Brazilian President João Goulart was ousted by the Brazilian Armed Forces, resulting in a repressive regime plagued by censorship, extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. After José Sarney assumed office in 1985, officially ending the coup, new forms of communal groups began to emerge among the poorest areas of the favelas. The Favelas Pastoral Committee (FPC) and various Pentecostal groups emerged as a distinct form of grassroots mobilization, often led by local figures connected to the Catholic Church. These organizations positioned themselves as alternatives to longstanding systems of clientelism, which despite their efforts, still plays a key role in authoritative quid-pro-quos, with police, politicians and criminals shaking hands behind closed doors. These groups put a focus on collective claims for infrastructure, housing and access to public services for those most in need, trying to funnel resources without intervention from the rising corruption. By the early 80s, these groups accounted for a quarter of all favela residents, yet their interests started to shift. Initially grounded in collective community, the groups slowly splintered into a more individualistic approach, focusing on the needs of the individual rather than collective, gradually weakening the resistance they would need to combat the new challenge in the favelas – the violent drug trade, earning them the nickname of “narco-Pentecostals”.
By the mid-1980s, drug trafficking, specifically in cocaine and cannabis, had consolidated into the principal locus of power within many favelas. Armed groups linked to the illicit drug trade evolved from fragmented criminal networks into territorially embedded authorities capable of enforcing order through violence, corruption and racketeering. Community leaders, such as those who were foundational to the early religious commune, were increasingly forced to accommodate or associate with traffickers as a means of protecting themselves. It was clear that activists and critics who questioned trafficker authority would be killed. Limited economic prospects contributed to recruitment into drug trafficking, allowing for widespread enforcement as the strength of these groups grew year on year. However, these conditions alone do not sufficiently explain the depth of criminal entrenchment, rather, the rise of traffickers reflected a longer historical pattern in which the state consistently abdicated direct governance of peripheral territories, leaving them under the control of local OGCs who maintained order through violence. These OGCs are primarily represented by 3 organizations, Commando Vermelho (CV), the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and the Família do Norte (FDN).
CV, which had emerged in the late 1970s within Rio de Janeiro’s prison system, expanded its reach during this period, consolidating control over drug markets across much of the city. Led by Fernandinho Beira-Mar, known as one of the biggest arms and drug traffickers in the whole of Latin America. CV originally earned their fame in the prison network, fighting for prisoner solidarity and against abuse by government agents. Beyond the confines of prison walls, CV gradually transformed into a sophisticated criminal organization centered on drug trafficking. By the late 1990s, Beira-Mar shifted operations closer to Brazil’s borders, laying the groundwork for the Amazon region to become a strategic hub within international cocaine supply chains. At the turn of the century, the PCC, initially another prison-led group, expanded nationally and internationally, particularly following organizational reforms between 2006 and 2012 under the leadership of Marcos Herbas Camacho, known as Marcola. Motivated by his witnessing the Carandiru massacre in 1992, Marcola was repeatedly transferred from facility to facility, gaining respect among various prison populations. Upon one of his repeated escapes from prison, Marcola fled to Paraguay, eventually being picked up after a bank robbery in 1999. Despite his incarceration, he gained a cult-like following, allowing the PCC to grow beyond prison walls. The group began to adopt a more collective leadership structure, extending its influence beyond Brazil and establishing links with criminal organizations across Latin America and Europe. Simultaneously, the Família do Norte (FDN) emerged in the Amazon region, founded in the mid-2000s to specifically control drug trafficking routes outside prison walls, including combatting the expansion of the PCC to the contested triple border of Brazil, connecting drug routes to Peru and Columbia.
From the late 2000s onward, the landscape of violence in Rio de Janeiro evolved again with the expansion of militias and racketeering groups composed largely of current and former security personnel. Unlike drug factions such as CV, militias derive much of their income from extortion, monopolizing essential services such as water, electricity, transport, housing and telecommunications. Although they also engage in drug sales, their primary commodity is “protection” from other militias or OGCs. They rapidly expanded during the 2000s and 2010s, now controlling nearly half of all territories dominated by armed groups in Rio, with credit for their growth having been facilitated by direct participation from police officers and elected officials, granting them political protection. With a crucial alliance between CV and PCC collapsing in 2016 due to the murder of Jorje Rafaat, a key independent trafficker, some 20 years after its inception, Brazilian authorities would ramp up raids, killings and pressure upon the ever more fragmented criminal underground. The killing of Rafaat, allegedly orchestrated by PCC leadership with CV cooperation, triggered a breakdown of understanding. At the same time, Rio de Janeiro’s public security strategy increasingly relied on aggressive police raids as the primary mechanism of crime control. Between 2002 and 2022, over 21,500 people were killed by on-duty police officers in the state, with police responsible for nearly one-third of all violent deaths in 2022 alone.
Empirical analyses consistently show that intensified police raids do not reduce homicide or property crime rates, despite acting as a primary goal in doing so. Instead, they correlate strongly with increased levels of lethal violence, particularly towards civilians during the raids themselves, rather than targeted at members of OGCs. Despite these findings, raids remain the central instrument of state intervention in favelas, functioning less as crime prevention tools than as mechanisms of territorial control.
Raids
For more than a decade, police operations in Rio’s favelas have been characterized by a persistent failure to dismantle criminal control. By the mid-2010s, patterns of lethal policing were already deeply entrenched. In 2015, the killing of five Black teenagers by police gunfire in Rio highlighted the racialized application of force and the rarity of accountability. At the time, Black Brazilians were already nearly three times more likely to be killed by police than white Brazilians. Nationwide, police killings exceeded 6,000 annually, with Rio de Janeiro consistently ranking among the deadliest states. Investigations into these deaths were overwhelmingly conducted by the police themselves, resulting in the closure of most cases without charges. Official inquiries later showed that as many as 98 percent of police killing investigations were shelved without accountability. By 2017, joint operations involving military and police forces had become increasingly common. A November 2017 raid in the Complexo do Salgueiro illustrated the structural barriers to accountability as eight civilians were killed during a joint army and civil police operation. Yet again, investigators were unable to interview military personnel involved, nor even obtain a complete list of participants. Compounding this, a law enacted the previous month transferred jurisdiction over killings involving armed forces personnel to military courts, effectively shielding such cases from independent civilian investigation. From 2019 onward, the election of officials openly endorsing violent policing coincided with record-breaking numbers of killings by law enforcement. In the first quarter of 2019 alone, police in Rio state killed 434 people, the highest figure since records began in 1998, even as overall homicide rates declined. Despite official claims of armed confrontation, the disproportionate number of deaths relative to injuries repeatedly raised doubts about whether arrests were genuinely being sought to combat OGCs.
The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic briefly exposed the extent to which police violence was policy-driven, with Brazil’s Supreme Court restricting police raids in Rio’s low-income neighborhoods to “absolutely exceptional” circumstances in 2020. The immediate effect was striking – police killings dropped by more than 70 percent over the following months. However, enforcement of the ruling proved fragile and by October that same year, raids resumed at scale, with incursions rapidly returning to near-daily frequency with almost 800 people killed by police in a 10 month period. Several of the deadliest raids in Rio’s history occurred during this period. In May 2021, a raid in Jacarezinho left 28 people dead, making it the most lethal police operation ever recorded in the city. Authorities justified the incursion as an effort to arrest suspected drug traffickers, despite the Supreme Court restriction and the absence of exceptional circumstances, with investigations into the killings being ultimately closed without charge. In May 2022, a military-style raid in Vila Cruzeiro killed at least 23 people over the course of 12 hours, becoming the second-deadliest police operation in Rio’s history. The following year, mass-lethal raids had become further normalized across multiple Brazilian states, including Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Bahia. Coordinated operations left at least 45 people dead within days, most notably in Complexo da Penha, with police intelligence suggesting a meeting of gang leaders, acting as justification for another operation that killed at least 10 people. The persistence of this approach culminated in October 2025 with the deadliest police raid in Rio’s history. On October 28, police targeted the Alemão and Penha neighborhoods in an operation aimed at CV. By the state’s own account, 117 people were killed, including two children, while only six members of the public were injured. The resulting kill-to-injury ratio, nearly 20 to 1, stood in stark contrast to expectations for law enforcement operations conducted with the intent to arrest rather than kill. Compounding this, less than a quarter of participating officers wore body cameras, despite a Supreme Court mandate requiring their use.
Amid this hostile landscape, limited yet positive institutional reforms began to emerge in 2025. In April, Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered prosecutors to lead investigations whenever there is suspicion of unlawful killing by law enforcement. Shortly thereafter, the National Council of Prosecutors adopted a resolution detailing how such investigations should be conducted, including requirements for preserving crime scenes, maintaining chains of custody, improving data collection and expanding the use of body cameras. These changes marked a partial break from the long-standing practice of police investigating themselves, however, the reforms were not without significant limitations. The Supreme Court removed requirements for advance notification of prosecutors prior to police operations in Rio and relaxed restrictions on tactics such as helicopter gunfire and the use of schools or health facilities as operational bases in “extreme necessity.” Moreover, prosecutor-led investigations into torture, sexual violence and other abuses were made conditional on findings of “serious or systematic” violations, narrowing the scope of mandatory oversight in that regard.
Conclusion
The rampant drug trade in Rio de Janeiro is not the result of an absent state authority, but of the way that authority has been selectively enforced. Criminal organizations and militias have not grown despite the state but sustained alongside its corruption. Police raids have become the central tool of public security, yet they have repeatedly failed to dismantle organized crime, instead, they have normalized the use of lethal force against OGCs while simultaneously protecting militias and their own forces. Meaningful accountability for police violence remains rare, despite recent court rulings and prosecutorial reforms suggesting a limited shift toward greater oversight. However, without addressing the deeper political and economic incentives that link violence, corruption and the war on drugs together, policing in Rio will continue to generate instability rather than lasting public safety.
Image: The Rocinha favela in Rio de Janeiro (cropped) (Source: chensiyuan via CC BY-SA 4.0)
