SUMMARY
The state of Bahia is experiencing a wave of violence, with shootings recorded almost daily. From June to September, a series of police operations on the outskirts of Salvador and in cities in the metropolitan region have left a death toll that continues to grow. The most recent events seen this year reflect growth never seen since 2015. The state took the lead in the ranking of victims of police intervention in the country, surpassing Rio de Janeiro. The police force’s response has only been based on more operations that have generated more deaths. All of this said, the public security crisis in Bahia has many similarities with the trajectory of Rio de Janeiro.
Recent Cases
On 24 September, a woman and three children were held hostage by seven armed men since the night in the Dom Avelar neighborhood, in Salvador. After eight hours of negotiations, the victims were rescued without injuries in the early morning of the following day. Five criminals were arrested, and a 16-year-old teenager was apprehended. According to the Military Police, the criminals invaded the property at around 22:30, after a shooting with police officers from Special Rounds (Rondesp).
On 22 September, six men died in clashes with police during an operation in the Águas Claras region, in Salvador, and in Feira de Santana, the capital’s metropolitan area. According to police, the dead were part of a criminal group suspected of killing more than 30 people. During the operation 15 people were arrested.
These were just two of the most recent episodes of the wave of violence that has ravaged the state of Bahia since June.
Between 1 and 30 September, at least 68 deaths were recorded in shootouts involving police forces to repress gangs across the state. The proportion is almost two deaths per day in the last month. Most deaths were recorded in peripheral neighborhoods of Salvador, such as Alto das Pombas, Calabar, Valéria and Águas Claras.
Between 1 and 30 September, at least 68 deaths were recorded in shootouts involving police forces to repress gangs across the state. The proportion is almost two deaths per day in the last month. Most deaths were recorded in peripheral neighborhoods of Salvador, such as Alto das Pombas, Calabar, Valéria and Águas Claras.
These episodes are another chapter in the public security crisis faced by the Jerônimo Rodrigues (PT) government, which includes the intensification of disputes between factions, massacres, and informal curfews caused by fear or threats spread by criminals. Overall, the scalation in hostilities instills panic among citizens and leads to the closure of schools, health centers, religious temples, and businesses, thus interrupting the normal activities and pushing.
History of violence in Bahia between July and September:
- In one week, between 28 July and 4 August, 30 deaths in different clashes with military police
- In Salvador, several exchanges of gunfire and actions with 17 freed hostages forced residents of the Alto das Pombas neighbourhood to leave their homes in August
- On 3 September, 11 people were killed in a confrontation with the Military Police and eight were arrested in Alto das Pombas and Calabar, a neighbouring neighbourhood. More than 15 weapons were seized
- The early hours of 6 September were marked by shootings in two other neighbourhoods of the Bahian capital: Engenho Velho de Brotas and Nordeste de Amaralina
- On 15 September, federal, civil, and military police carried out an operation to execute arrest warrants against a criminal group. There, the agents were surprised by members of a faction that was about to clash with a criminal group that operates in the region. A federal police officer and four criminals were killed
- Since then, another 11 people suspected of participating in the confrontation have died in different neighbourhoods of Salvador and Simões Filho
Progress of Criminal Factions
After several records of clashes this September, especially in Salvador, the Secretary of Public Security of Bahia, Marcelo Werner, stated that the war between factions is the main cause of violence in the state.
Luiz Henrique Requião, specialist in criminal sciences and president of the National Criminal Law Association (ANACRIM/BA), states that criminal factions in Salvador and in cities in the interior of Bahia have always existed but they started to gain force and face each other after joining large criminal groups from outside the state.
Bahia has a very favorable geographic location for receiving, storing, and delivering illicit goods like drugs and weapons. The state is a gateway to the Northeast, bordering states in the North, Center West, and Southeast regions; it is crossed by several state and federal highways – some of the most important are BR-116, BR-101, and BR-324 –, and it is also home to the largest coastal area in Brazil and criminals take advantage of this. Furthermore, the First Capital Command (PCC) and the Red Command (CV) factions observed that local criminal groups had an amateur distribution network, but that they could take advantage of their activities to grow therein.
As a probable reflex of the changes brought by the outsider groups to the local drug market, in 2022, the Federal Highway Police (PRF) had record drug seizures – almost 10 tons on highways crossing the state. Regarding cocaine, the PRF indicates an increase of 148% (2,160 kg) in the volume found compared to the previous year (870 kg).
The connections between the local and national drug trafficking groups and the territorial divisions provoked by their presence can be seen on the streets of Salvador and its metropolitan area, where graffiti in many neighborhoods indicate alliances and who rules there. In some there can be found messages from the Red Command and a local group called Bonde do Maluco (BDM), which is evidence the connection between them. The same situation exists between the PCC and another local gang, the Katiara.
The recent fights have reshaped the configuration of territorial control previously held by the criminal groups. For instance, Valéria and Águas Claras, location of operations in recent weeks, were once controlled by BDM and Katiara, but today they are experiencing a moment of dispute. The Tancredo Neves neighborhood, BDM’s area of activity, is also recording constant shootings. The Northeast of Amaralina, under the control of the Katiara group, has also been affected by shootings.
Bahia: The Second Most Violent State in Brazil
The consequences of the fights are made clear by criminal rates recently published in the 2023 Brazilian Public Security Yearbook. Data disclosed shows that Bahia is the second most lethal state in Brazil, with an intentional violent death rate (IVD) of 47.1 per 100,000 inhabitants. In absolute numbers, the state of Bahia had the most deaths in 2022 with 6,659 violent deaths. The alarming data, which places the state as leader in the national ranking, was collected by the Brazilian Public Security Forum (FBSP). The total number of violent deaths includes intentional homicides (including feminicides); bodily injuries followed by death; robbery followed by death; deaths of police officers and deaths committed by them during operations.
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Among all the five types of violent crimes that are used to calculate the state’s violent death rate, three have had improvements, with reductions in events recorded from 2021 to 2022. It was the case of intentional homicides, which fell by 8.96%; of robberies followed by death, with a 36.5% reduction; and of deaths of police officers, which went down by 15.3%. These results were responsible for the improvement in the general result of the state’s IVD, which went from 50 to 47.1. However, the change was quite small, and it is far from removing Bahia from its second position in the ranking of most violent states. In fact, the state narrowly escaped leading the ranking. If it was not for the extremely small population in Amapá – only 733,508 (IBGE-2022) –, the top position could have been given to Bahia, which had the largest absolute numbers in the most relevant categories: intentional homicides (5,044) and deaths committed by law enforcement (1,464).
Of the 50 most violent cities in the country, 12 are in Bahia, which is the state that appears most on the list. All of them have more than 100,000 inhabitants. The municipality with the highest rate of violent deaths is Jequié. The city has a violent death rate of 88.8 per 100,000 inhabitants, more than eight times the value seen as acceptable by the United Nations (UN).
Furthermore, four of the five most violent cities are in Bahia of the country. All have mortality rates around three times higher than the national average of 23.4 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the Brazilian Public Security Yearbook.
- Jequié-BA: average of 88.1
- Santo Antônio de Jesus-BA: average of 88.3
- Simões Filho-BA: average of 87.4
- Camaçari-BA: average of 82.1
- Cabo de Santo Agostinho-PE: average of 81.2
The data mapped by the Fogo Cruzado Institute also points to a bleak scenario: between July 2022 and June 2023, in the 13 municipalities that make up Greater Salvador, 1,545 shootings were recorded, which resulted in 1,422 victims, of which 1,097 died. Furthermore, on average, 39 people are shot per month during police operations.
Critics state that state government strategy to fight crime has contributed to the conditions observed. The main target of criticisms is the adoption of a militarized security model, with the increase in specialized Military Police battalions. As they are geared towards confrontation, they end up being more lethal. In September, more than 60 people have been killed in conflicts between the factions and the Military Police, which contributed to increasing the bad reputation of the local police. Recent data from the Brazilian Public Security Forum points to the state as the leader in police lethality, with 23% of all deaths committed by police officers in the country.
In the specific case of Bahia, the coordinator of IDEAS – a civil society organization that promotes popular advice -, Wagner Moreira, explains that the leadership in the ranking of murders in the country is the combination of a series of factors. For him, throughout the two decades of the 21st century, the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) governments had the possibility of presenting a different project but did not propose it. They were unable to present changes and relied on the logic of violent confrontations to break the expansion of drug traffickers, instead of implementing intelligence and social approaches.
The Escalation of Deaths Resulting from Police Interventions
The number of deaths by police grew consistently in Bahia between 2015 and 2022, the year in which the state had been surpassing Rio de Janeiro, becoming the police force that had accumulated the highest number of killings during operations in the country.
Data from the Brazilian Public Security Forum indicate that police violence remained stable between 2008 and 2015, varying between 303 and 400 cases per year. In the last eight years, however, deaths resulting from police actions have quadrupled in the state. The number of occurrences jumped from 354 to 1,464 per year between 2015 and 2022, a period in which Bahia was governed by Rui Costa (PT), now Minister of the Civil House of the Lula government.
Another aspect that contributes to the increase in police lethality is impunity. What prevailed in the state of Bahia is a political-legal articulation to not hold the Military Police (PM) responsible, in a kind of “lethality pact”. The increase in deaths resulting from police interventions in Bahia is also directly related to the Normative Instruction 001/2019, which came into force in July 2019 and remained active until March 22, 2023, when the Court of Justice of Bahia (TJ-BA) unanimously judged its unconstitutionality. With the decision of the TJ-BA, the investigation was once again carried out by the Civil Police. This regulation, in practice, imposed restrictions on the investigation of civilian deaths caused by military police officers.
Rui Costa’s administration was market by episodes such as the so-called “Chacina no Cabula” (Cabula’s Massacre), which left 12 young people dead in February 2015. At the time, the governor compared the situation of a police officer in an operation to that of “a scorer in front of the goal”.
State Forces’ Responses
In a press conference, the Minister of Justice and Public Security, Flávio Dino, ruled out the possibility of federal intervention in Bahia to contain the wave of violence in the state. According to him, this type of intervention should only be carried out when there is a lack of action by the State government.
Also, according to Dino, the ministry is in dialogue with the Bahia state governor, Jerônimo Rodrigues, and with the Secretary of Public Security of the State, Marcelo Werner. The objective of the dialogue is to improve operations, as criminal organizations have strengthened in Bahia in recent years, including increased access to weapons. As a result, the number of rifles seized between January and September this year in Bahia more than doubled compared to the entire 2022. According to the Bahia Public Security Secretariat (SSP-BA), as of September 25, 48 riffles were seized. Between January and December last year, 22 weapons of this type were seized.
It was in this scenario that, in August, an agreement was signed by the Public Security Secretariat of Bahia (SSP-BA) and the Federal Police, creating the Integrated Force to Combat Organized Crime (FICCO), of the state and federal governments. After the creation of the integrated force, joint operations began to be carried out in the state. One of them, carried out on 15 September, in Salvador, left five people dead – including federal police officer Lucas Caribé.
After the death of the federal agent, armored vehicles and police officers from the Federal District were sent to Bahia. Despite this, the minister states that the situation is not a question of federal intervention, but rather of financial and material support.
Similarities with Rio de Janeiro
The wave of violence that is currently plaguing the state of Bahia is nothing new in Brazil. Many examples of local crisis in public security have been seen across the country. Only this year, the nation witnessed a wave of attacks by gangs in Rio Grande do Norte, during March, and the Amazon crisis, in February. In many ways, these cases are the manifestation of local problems but with a common element, the arrival and local expansion of powerful drug trafficking organizations from other states, particularly from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
This expansion is a phenomenon acknowledged by law enforcement in general and it is no coincidence that it bears many similarities with what is already considered routine in Rio de Janeiro. The escalation of violence and deaths that devastates the Northeastern state seems to replicate in many aspects what has been observed in its counterpart from the Southeast, an area that has been contested by at least four major gangs for decades. The similarity with Rio is important to understand that this is a hard challenge for public authorities to overcome. Besides, even though the present integrated police solutions may have placated the situation, it is a temporary solution and new conflicts can emerge at any time.
