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More Than 170 Killed in Brazilian Prison Riots

The Brazilian authorities believed they could weaken the most powerful prison gang in Brazil by secretly transferring some of its high profile leaders to remote correctional facilities, but their secret was out ? and consequences were grave. Apparently, there was an informer among those who knew about the plan, and the gang was informed about the authorities` plans.

Arthur Vinicius Pilastre Silva, an employee of a company hired by the government to tape such meetings, later admitted during a public inquiry that he had accepted the equivalent of $93 to slip a copy of the recording to attorneys for the First Command of the Capital, the gang more commonly known by its Portuguese initials, PCC. Within hours of that meeting, news of the transfer plan had spread through the gang`s prison-based network, and millions of residents of South America`s largest city would soon find out just how powerful the PCC had become.

Riots broke out in more than 70 state penitentiaries. Gang members outside prisons attacked police stations, burned more than 60 public buses and whipped up a general state of terror that paralyzed Brazil`s Sao Paulo. Angered and humiliated by the uprisings, law enforcement officers roamed through neighborhoods with guns drawn, killing more than 100 people they claimed were connected to the PCC. In all, more than 170 people died in a week of open warfare between the gang and the police.