SAO PAULO: A prison drug-trafficking gang known as First Command of the Capital or "PCC" is orchestrating a wave of murderous attacks against military police in the Sao Paulo metropolitan area, experts say.
Some 100 officers, including 90 military police, have been killed, mainly in the Sao Paulo area, since the beginning of the year. Forty-one of the officers were executed by gunmen, officials said.
Over the weekend, a 44-year-old female military officer died after being shot in the back 10 times in front of her 11-year-old daughter as she stepped out of her car, the state public security secretariat told AFP Monday.
Often, after a police officeer is killed, there follows a spate of shooting deaths of suspected drug traffickers or robbers, which families of the victims claim are retaliation by the state military police.
"I believe the PCC is responsible for the attacks against the military police," Camila Dias, an expert at University of Sao Paulo's Nucleus for the Study of Violence, told AFP.
"But some groups within the police are also involved in retaliatory attacks."
At least 26 people were killed in and around Sao Paulo over the past three days, including a prison guard and a 10-year-old girl.
In September, the number of homicides in the Sao Paulo metropolitan area -- home to 20 million people -- rose to 144, more than 27 percent higher than the August figure. The tally for September 2011 was 71.
Security officials are playing down the importance of the PCC, saying other criminal groups may be involved in the current cycle of violence.
Last month, Sao Paulo state's public security secretary Antonio Ferreira Pinto has dismissed reports that the PCC has 1,343 members spread out in 123 of Sao Paulo state's 645 cities.
"The faction is much smaller," he told the daily Folha de Sao Paulo. "There aren't even 30 or 40 individuals who are imprisoned for a long time and engage in trafficking. We have choked off this traffic with big arrests."
On Saturday, a suspected drug trafficker was gunned down by police after refusing an order to stop his vehicle on a Sao Paulo highway.
Press reports identified him as a drug baron from the Sao Paulo slum Paraisopolis, which was occupied by 600 heavily-armed military police a week ago after a tip-off that a crime boss there had ordered the killing of police.
Ferreira Pinto has said the order to kill police officers came from local gang leader Francisco Antonio Cesario da Silva, alias Piaui, who was arrested last August.
Last week, the daily Estado de Sao Paulo reported that among documents seized by police during their operation in Paraisopolis was a list with names, addresses and physical descriptions of more than 40 military police officers.
Also found was a letter with orders to kill two police officers for every "cowardly execution" of a PCC member.
The PCC was formed in 1993 by eight prisoners serving time in a state maximum security prison in Taubate, 141 kilometers (88 miles) northeast of Sao Paulo.
Dias said the gang dominates organized crime in Sao Paulo, controlling drug and arms trafficking as well as bank robberies.
"It also has a presence in other states, particularly in the northeast, but also in Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul," she added.
Gang leaders appear to be masterminding their far-flung operations from their jail cells, she said.
But Dias criticized the military police for its heavy-handed tactics, saying that lethal violence against suspected criminals only worsens the situation and sparks reprisals.
Instead, she said police should try to cripple the PCC's finances and try to regain the trust of residents of the shantytowns where gang members operate.
"The residents do not see the police as protectors but as oppressors, which is precisely the PCC's contention," Dias said.
She called for deployment of community police who can earn the trust of residents and for "independent mechanisms to control the police, particularly its use of lethal force in the favelas."
Military police chief Roberval Ferreira Franca has meanwhile rejected as unnecessary the use of federal forces to help restore order as was done in Rio to wrest control of favelas from drug traffickers.
The rising mayhem last week prompted President Dilma Rousseff to offer federal help to the state of Sao Paulo.
Justice Minister Jose Eduardo Cardoso is to travel to Sao Paulo this week for talks with state security officials on joint efforts to restore security.
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