americas
In the darkness before dawn, forces assemble to raid a narcotics empire in an outlying district of Rio, the shanty-towns known as the Complexo do Alemão. “When you are a criminal and you see this kind of vehicle, you get out!”, observes Lt-Col Fabio Cajueiro, who took these pictures of the day
one Sunday last November, a long-planned, armed invasion of a group of shanty-towns known as the Complexo do Alemão (German Complex). He likens this place to the caves of Afghanistan – a drug traffickers’ fortress with tunnels into the hillside and arsenals, run by a kind of army. Te raid, which became a 24-hour running battle, also
involved helicopters, the Army and Marines – for whom DETEL provided TETRA radios too. Above flew an aircraft equipped with thermal imaging to locate people on the ground; it could also pinpoint mobile phones and radio transmitters. “Te key word is integration”, he explains. “During these
operations, all people use the radios and we use GPS to see the people on the ground. We used all the capacities of the radio for integration between forces. “Last year our general commander of military police gave
us the order to go to Europe and visit six countries in Europe, and after this we visited Israel, to see the best products, the best police force, the best military force, in order to understand the concepts and to use these here. “We see systems in Spain, in France, in England. But
the nearest to our reality is Israel because many enemies are around.” Vitally important in major operations is the security of
the radio signal. Te TETRA signal is digital and therefore hard to intercept. But adding encryption makes it almost impossible to penetrate. With Rio’s old analogue radio system, drug traffickers often monitored the police channels. Worse, officers sometimes had to abandon an analogue channel because the criminals were transmitting on it, making fun of them by hurling insults and playing provocative songs. “We joke between ourselves that you don’t have revolutions
in Brazil – or Hawaii, or Australia – because we have many beautiful girls, beaches and beer”, Lt-Col Cajueiro continues, with a smile. “But here in Rio de Janeiro we have problems with criminals, like these problems. Problems in paradise. “We see drugs in all cities of the world. But drugs with
assault weapons, with rifles, with AK47s, maybe only in Rio de Janeiro. Maybe in Colombia, maybe in South Africa. But here you have this kind of numbers.”
Issue 4 2011 TE TRA TODAY 27
On the front line In the raid on the Complexo do Alemão, engineers from DETEL were right in the front line, visiting the site beforehand as part of their preparations. Tey were armed, though not in uniform. “Before you begin a military operation, you have to plan where you put your communications gateway, radio base station, repeater”, says Lt-Col Cajueiro. “We used the concepts of Europe, both the Americans and Israel here. When we went to the Complexo do Alemão one week before, we were on the ground, planning where to put it. “Two days before, we occupied some hills to put our
radios before the invasion. Our troops, with DETEL, with the people of CCI (the communications and information technology unit) – they occupied many hills around the German Complex and we studied the radio waves in order to put people in good communication and good coverage. ”It’s a very dangerous situation because we have to be
prepared. You cannot attract the attention of the traffickers because you are an inferior number, and the people have weapons of war. To put a little radio in a building, it’s a very dangerous situation.
In a temporary command and control centre at military police headquarters, officers monitor local TV for coverage of the raid. For a Brazilian TV reporter’s on- the-spot account of this hair-raising operation, try www.
youtube.com/watch ?v=a8_9QNYgMg8
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