A third of Rio Police operation’s victims have no criminal proceedings in Court

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – A third of the people killed by the Rio de Janeiro Civil Police during Operation Exceptis, last Thursday, May 6th, have no criminal proceedings on the Rio de Janeiro State Court website.

A survey, conducted by Estadão on the court’s website on Saturday evening, May 8th, showed that no criminal proceedings are registered in the name of 9 of the 27 killed in the operation.

The police claim that all victims had criminal records, based on their own data. The newspaper did not have access to police inquiries – it was therefore impossible to check if any of the 9 men killed were being investigated for a crime but had not yet been reported to the courts.

The police operation in the Jacarezinho favela in northern Rio left 28 people dead. The operation began early in the morning, shortly after 6 AM, when residents reported the presence of helicopters flying over the region and heavy gunfire.

In addition to the dead, people were also wounded – including inside the Triagem subway station. Of these, 27 were classified by the police as “criminals.” In addition, detective inspector André Leonardo de Mello Frias was also killed in the operation.

Estadão searched for criminal cases, jury trials and appeals. It found no indictments against Cleyton da Silva Freitas de Lima, Natan Oliveira de Almeida, Ray Barreiros de Araújo, Luiz Augusto Oliveira de Farias, Marlon Santana de Araújo, John Jefferson Mendes Rufino da Silva, Wagner Luiz Magalhães Fagundes, Caio da Silva Figueiredo, and Diogo Barbosa Gomes.

People accused of being drug dealers and/or thieves were among the majority of the 18 dead with criminal charges. At least 22 indictments for crimes related to drug trafficking and 14 to robbery were found. There are also a few cases of reception and theft, and one charge of larceny. In some cases, the same defendant is charged with several crimes, so the sum of crimes is higher than the number of people killed in the operation.

Only 3 of the 27 dead were the targets of arrest warrants in the police operation. They were Richard Gabriel da Silva Ferreira, Isaac Pinheiro de Oliveira and Rômulo Oliveira Lúcio. Like the others wanted by the police that day, they were being prosecuted for “Association for Production and Trafficking and Related Conduct (Art. 35 – Law 11.343/06) with Increased Sentence for Illegal Drug Trafficking (Art. 40 – Law 11.343/2006), IV”, in the capital’s 19th Criminal Court.

Some of these cases have been closed – temporarily or definitively. The research was conducted over a 21-year period, from 2000 to 2021.

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