7 years after UPPs failure, Rio still has no plan to occupy slums | Brazil

Since 2022, Claudio Castro’s administration has had a program that combines policing with the provision of public services, Cidade Integrada. However, records of armed clashes in the past three years and reports from residents indicate that they have not led to a decrease in violence.

Even after the program began, shooting records increased or remained at a high level in 2023 and 2024 in three communities served – Jacarezinho, Mosima and Río das Piedras – present data from the Fogo Cruzado Institute collected at the request of the report.

Only this year did clashes decrease in the places where the program was announced, after a general decline in the municipality. 1,863 shooting incidents or the use of firearms were recorded in the capital, Rio de Janeiro, from January to September 2025, a 5% decrease compared to the same period last year, according to Fogo Cruzado.

The Cidade Integrada has been compared more than once to the experience of pacification police units (UPPs), mainly because it was opened with police operations in the communities of Jacarezinho and Mozima and with the promise of state occupation of these areas.

The Castro government’s plan has been criticized for its inability to reclaim territory from organized crime and for having no criteria to evaluate its actions. UPPs, in turn, went from a panacea to a symbol of failure in a period of ten years.

A total of 38 units were operating simultaneously at the peak of the program. Today, there are 16 reserve police units operating in the city, after the government officially closed and merged the police bases in November last year.

“The biggest weakness of the UPPs was their gigantism,” says Professor Jacqueline Moniz, who holds a master’s degree in public security at the Federal University of Fluminense (UFF), who worked on planning and evaluating the UPP at the invitation of the government. “I’m tired of warning.” “They have become an electoral political commodity, and they are no longer interested in following established plans.”

She explains that the military doctrine that inspired the UPPs followed the logic of UN peacekeeping missions. The territory was captured through the superiority of the Prime Minister’s forces and equipment, but the assumption was that the intense military occupation would last for a limited time, as it would be expensive to maintain.

According to experts, the model is better adapted to smaller slums. Progress towards a larger number of slums should be slow, as on-site policing should be reduced only after more public services (health centres, schools, cultural centres, municipal and government service stations) arrive and as the security situation stabilizes.

In practice, the arrival of consolidated police units was accompanied by few social projects, and the money needed to maintain police officers and adequate working conditions ran out when criminal groups were actually reorganized. The slums ended up being retaken by factions and militias, which gained momentum after the financial bankruptcy of the state government.

At the beginning of implementation, starting in 2008, the decrease in homicide records in the occupied communities led to praise from experts and positive evaluations from residents. Ten years later, under federal intervention, the first UPPs were deactivated.

“Shadow arrangements were created between these garrisons (of the prime minister) and the local drug traffickers, which ultimately led to the slum territory being divided between places where the police could move around and those where drug dealers continued to maintain drug selling points,” says researcher Carolina Grillo, from the GENIE (New Violations Study Group), also from the UFD.

The project has also suffered from erosion over the years due to abuses committed against residents. One of the most famous cases was the disappearance of construction worker Amarildo in Rocinha, whose suspicions fell on PUP agents in the neighborhood.

When contacted former Governor Sergio Cabral stated that criticism of the UPPs contradicted “crime rates in the quiet favelas and surrounding neighborhoods.” He pointed out that the entire public administration suffered financial difficulties after his government, not just Public Security.

Cabral rejected the idea of ​​using the program electorally to his advantage, “because I was not a candidate for any office in 2014,” and rejected the idea of ​​collusion between the police and criminals. “It is impossible to compare a months-long program (Integrated City) with the experience of several years like UPPs,” the former governor said.

The report contacted Luiz Fernando Pizao through his advisor, but did not receive any response.

The report spoke to two residents of the poor Jacarezinho district in northern Rio, who opened the programme. The two said that CV still dominates the region, even after the activities of Cidade Integrada, a front for the Castro administration, began.

One of them, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the police do not go up the hill and only maintain a guard room at the entrance to the slum. He says the departure of the prime minister’s staff would be an explanation for the decline in violence in Jacarezinho this year.

“Nothing has changed and nothing will change,” said Antonio Carlos Ferreira Gabriel, a resident of Jacarezinho. “Unfortunately, insecurity will always be part of our list. The offers of education, culture and social projects are never structural, but rather palliative. In this way, there will be no progress.”

After the operation in Jacarezinho and Mozima in January 2022, the state government’s announcements about Cidade Integrada were limited to urbanization and sanitation works, school renovations, employment campaigns and cultural activities. The emphasis on the policing aspect of the program has disappeared.

For the Benha and Alemaw complexes, the government has yet to submit a project to provide public services and police. According to the Claudio Castro administration, the plan was planned to be introduced within the scope of the ADPF das Favelas, where the STF (Supreme Federal Court) and other bodies monitor police operations in the Royal Jordanian.

The document must be submitted by December 20, the date on which the judiciary goes into recess.

Public Security Minister Victor Santos said during a press conference on October 31: “We have to differentiate between what is an appeal and what is an occupation. We are against the occupation.” “No state in Brazil has the means to permanently place police officers within communities.”

When contacted, Claudio Castro’s administration stated that Cidade Integrada “directly benefits about 30 communities” in the five priority regions. The government has allocated a total of R$357 million in business investments, in addition to R$14.5 million in microloan offers to entrepreneurs.