Witness Says Rio Officer Told Father: "We Weren't Going to Take Anyone Alive"

Human Rights Watch says new evidence indicates police used excessive force and may have intentionally killed scores of people during a Rio de Janeiro police operation that left 122 dead. ^[1][2]

The investigation, published on October 28, 2026, examines Operation Containment, carried out exactly a year earlier in Rio de Janeiro's Alemão and Penha complexes. Authorities said the operation aimed to arrest suspected members of Comando Vermelho, a drug-trafficking group with a stronghold in the low-income neighborhoods. ^[1][2]

The rights group puts the death toll at 117 non-police victims and five officers, one of whom died later from his injuries. Two children were among those killed. According to autopsy records it reviewed, more than 85 percent of the non-police dead were Black. Four files did not record race. ^[1][2]

HRW says residents received calls and messages from men cornered in the wooded Vacaria area who wanted to surrender. One witness told its researchers that an officer told a victim's father, "We weren't going to take anyone alive." That is a witness's account of the officer's words, reported by HRW. ^[2]

Police said gang members resisted, and HRW acknowledges that video shows armed men in the neighborhoods and woods. Its findings nevertheless challenge the idea that armed resistance explains every death: investigators must establish what threat each person posed when police used lethal force. ^[2][4]

Thousands of hours, no killings recorded

For its investigation, titled "A Strategy of Death," HRW reviewed 122 autopsy files, more than 8,800 pages of prosecutors' records, 4,400 hours of body-camera footage and 579 photographs and videos. Researchers conducted 41 interviews between October 2025 and September 2026. ^[2]

None of the killings appeared in the body-camera footage it reviewed, the organization said. It documented more than 250 instances of camera obstruction or other suspicious recording gaps. By noon, more than half of officers' recordings had ended or contained significant gaps. ^[1][2]

That leaves a large hole in the evidence from an operation involving around 2,500 heavily armed Military Police and Civil Police officers, supported by armored vehicles, helicopters and drones. The raid lasted about 15 hours. ^[2]

The autopsies supply another part of the picture. More than 60 percent of victims were shot four or more times, according to HRW. Repeated gunshot wounds alone do not settle whether an individual shooting was unlawful, but they make reconstructing each encounter essential. ^[2]

HRW also says officers failed to preserve crime scenes, investigators did not collect some key forensic evidence, and camera footage showed officers assaulting detainees. These alleged failures concern both what police did during the operation and whether investigators can now establish it. ^[2]

The findings are not a judicial determination that the deaths were unlawful, and the circumstances of every killing remain unresolved. How Rio officials, police leadership and the charged officers will respond to the new investigation is not yet known. ^[1][2]

An arrest operation that ended in the woods

Police planned to execute 100 arrest warrants and 145 search warrants. According to HRW's account, the operation targeted suspected members of Comando Vermelho across the two neighborhood complexes. ^[1][2]

In its account published three days after the raid, HRW said Rio's military police secretary described officers pushing alleged gang members toward a wooded area where elite officers had formed a "wall." Residents found scores of bodies there after police withdrew, the group said. ^[4]

Governor Cláudio Castro defended the operation as a confrontation with organized crime and described the day as historic. In his initial account, he said forensic work was continuing and that the official death toll he had received was 58, while acknowledging it would change. ^[5]

On October 31, 2025, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights put the toll at least 121 and said 113 people had been arrested. It cited public accounts of head wounds and other signs suggesting possible extrajudicial executions, meaning unlawful killings by police outside any court process. It called for an independent investigation extending through the chain of command. ^[3]

The operation also disrupted public transport, movement through the city, schools and access to health care, the commission said. Afro-descendant and low-income communities bore disproportionate effects. ^[3]

Accountability beyond camera tampering

At the time HRW published its investigation, prosecutors had charged 19 officers with alleged offenses including breaking into homes, theft and body-camera tampering. They were awaiting trial. None had been charged with unlawful use of force, and commanders responsible for the operation had not been held accountable, according to HRW. ^[2]

Those prosecutions could address abuses committed during the raid. They do not yet answer the central question raised by the death toll: whether officers unlawfully killed people, and whether those who planned or directed the operation bear responsibility.

Rio police were already under Supreme Court orders governing how such operations should be conducted. A 2022 order, finalized in April 2025, required procedures including body-camera use, coordination of medical responses and preservation of crime scenes. HRW says officers and senior officials repeatedly violated those requirements during the raid. ^[2][4]

The court had also directed prosecutors to lead investigations when police might be implicated. Yet HRW's October 2025 account said seized weapons were shown to the press before forensic examination and the Public Defender's Office was barred from attending autopsies. ^[4]

The next test is whether prosecutors pursue the killings themselves and examine responsibility above the officers on the ground. The Inter-American Commission has called for an independent inquiry into the full chain of command, alongside truth, justice, reparations and measures to prevent another such operation. ^[3]