Police give up efforts to stop criminals and focus on rescuing victims due to floods in Brazil

Looting in towns in Rio Grande do Sul state in southern Brazil, partially or completely submerged by floods that have devastated the region for days and killed at least 136 people until this Saturday, has spiraled out of control. The police gave up fighting the criminals and concentrated all their efforts on rescuing the victims. Several police officers told the press on condition of anonymity that they have no way of fighting and trying to arrest the thieves, such is the number of criminals who are taking advantage of the tragedy to steal everything that citizens have spent their entire lives on and had to leave behind.

One of the police officers who spoke to reporters said that as soon as the looting began, Rio Grande do Sul police assigned agents to accompany each rescue team, and later, after seeing that they did not have enough manpower to respond to all requests, agents were deployed on boats to guard the areas where most of these crimes were reported, but the new strategy also did not work given the vastness of the flooded areas. The security forces realized two things: the number of criminals and robberies was too great for agents on the ground to work effectively, especially in large areas that were completely flooded, and that, while trying to deal with these robbers, they were unable to assist in the rescue innocent people still trapped in flooded neighborhoods, trapped on the top floors of buildings for long and desperate days without drinking water, without energy, without food.

So, although this decision was not officially announced, so as not to harm the image of the police, the security forces chose to abandon the fight against thieves and focus on helping flood victims. Thousands of people who initially refused to leave their homes, believing that the floods would be temporary and that the water levels would soon drop, as the days passed and the difficulties increased, eventually decided to seek help and help escape.

Thus, the number of homeless people in the last 48 hours alone has increased from 232 thousand to more than 441 thousand. And many thousands of people remain stuck in homes surrounded by floodwaters, and in some cases surviving on rooftops in extremely dangerous and hazardous ways.

Thieves, faced with the danger of stormy and dirty river waters, which in some neighborhoods of the most affected cities reach a height of several meters on former streets and avenues, act boldly and with absolute calm, because in entire neighborhoods there is only one left, not in houses, shops, or businesses. people, and the few who remain can do nothing. They choose the easiest spots to break into, often using holes in the roofs made by previous occupants to escape. They enter the property and calmly choose what to take, which can give them more money and can be reused once it dries.

To move through the water, which has replaced asphalt, the bandits use boats of all types, in some cases stolen from volunteers who called under the guise of stranded residents asking for rescue. In Porto Alegre, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul state, where 85% of its territory is flooded, and in Canoas, a neighboring city in the same state of disaster, several rescue teams of unarmed volunteers have already been thrown into the water. criminals who attacked them and fled on boats.

In the first two days of this week alone, police arrested dozens of thieves, one of them was killed. But later, data on the arrests was no longer disclosed, since the priority of the police, as press interlocutors testified, was helping those who needed it most.