americas
department during the past 14 years than the United States Army through all the wars of the 20th Century. In those 14 years, over 2000 PMERJ offi cers have been killed on duty. As well as law enforcement, there can be natural events
to deal with. In January this year came exceptionally heavy rains, causing fl ooding and devastating mud slides which swept through several cities in a mountainous region of Rio de Janeiro State. T is disaster, almost without precedent in Brazil, cost more than 900 lives. With this experience, DETEL is currently reviewing its
emergency communications readiness. Some new emergency communications vehicles are part of these plans.
“T e other side is the civilian police department. It only
begins to work after the crime. Here the model is divided.” Also sharing the SIRCE system are the fi re department,
the municipal guard, civil defence (disaster rescue) forces of both the municipality and the state, the prisons service, government security, federal road police, and SAMU (emergency medical teams). “In the Pan American Games [in 2007], we learned that
during these events many federal forces and other forces come here to help, and then you have to be able to give radios. And it’s not a little quantity! We plan for maybe 2000–3000 radios. Last week we heard that FIFA asks for 2000 radios during the soccer World Cup! “It’s not a surprise to us because we saw a situation
something like this in the Pan-American games. We have to plan this.” On a darker note, he adds: “We joke between ourselves that
if God was a Brazilian, he was born in Rio de Janeiro. But we have to plan thinking that all the terrorist peoples – people with problems – come here for the international games. We don’t expect it – but we have to plan for the worst scenario in order to be prepared for any kind of situation.”
City crime Meanwhile, the police and other emergency services have their everyday jobs to do. Every tourist guidebook to Rio warns of the city’s pickpockets, bag-snatchers and muggers, but too often matters become far more serious. In the week after this writer’s visit, a woman judge with a reputation for fi ghting organized crime was ambushed and gunned down outside her home by masked assailants on motorcycles. In the shanty towns or favelas which sprawl up the steep
hillsides around Rio, drugs gangs are commonly in charge. And they are not to be treated lightly. Law offi cers are liable to be met with AK-47 and M16 rifl es, and with grenades, anti- personnel mines and rockets. In 18 years, they have seized 170 000 weapons, four times PMERJ’s own complement of arms. Matters are slowly improving now as the authorities gain
a grip on the favelas; but, with a series of detailed graphs and tables of casualty fi gures, Lt-Col Cajueiro shows dramatically that it has been more dangerous to join Rio’s military police
Issue 4 2011 TE TRA TODAY
Communications studies T e state’s fi rst practical experience of TETRA came in 2007, with a small installation to support the Pan American Games in Rio in that year. “Since 2003 we had studied many communications protocols”, says Lt-Col Cajueiro. “We studied APCO 25, we studied Tetrapol, we studied TETRA – and we understood that the TETRA was the best. So we were waiting for the chance to go to TETRA. T en the Pan American Games came and we began to use TETRA.” Since then, the network – an IP-based Nebula system from
Teltronic – has been extended. Today, DETEL operates 61 radio sites, of which 31 supply TETRA coverage across the city region. T e remainder carry the old analogue service. Digital coverage could therefore be wider than it is, and the communications team would like to have more TETRA sites, extending coverage to the interior of the state – but back in 2007 it was decided to remain with the existing government radio sites.
Lieutenant-Colonel Fabio Cajueiro, co- ordinator for critical communications in the State of Rio de Janeiro: his department manages telecoms systems for law enforcement and public protection, including a multi- agency TETRA radio network
TETRA equipment by Teltronic at the SIRCE network’s central hub. Teltronic, which has been active in Brazil for several years, has also supplied TETRA radio systems to Supervia, Rio de Janeiro’s regional railway operator, and to a major steelworks
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