violence in Jacarezinho

Brazil's hardcore police are still shooting it out with drug gangs in the favelas as the city tries a show of force in the lead-up to the Pan American games next month. The latest body count: eight dead in Jacarezinho, the sprawling favela in the city's working class Zona Norte. The police claimed they had wounded the local drug Kingping (a man called Snoop) and confiscated 6,000 bags of cocaine and three grenades.

But consider this: drug traffickers "have maintained their bases in the Vila Cruzeiro shantytown despite a police occupation that has lasted more than a month."

Reuters reports.