SAO PAULO, Nov. 11 (UPI) -- Brazilian authorities have raided criminal festivities dubbed the "Night of Terror" and arrested more than 140 suspected gang members linked to the attacks on police forces in and around the nation's largest city.
The arrests were made by Sao Paulo's Department of Investigations of Organized Crime, which specializes in hunting down gang members.
Officials are questioning Tuesday the suspects rounded up late last night and searching for links to the more than 40 attacks on law officers and police stations that first began last Sunday.
The attacks -- killing two and wounding several others -- are being attributed to Sao Paulo's largest criminal gang, the First Capital Command, known locally as the PCC. The party was thought to be a brazen celebration of their recent attacks on officers and police stations.
Authorities also suspect the gangs involvement in a weekend prison break in which 30 inmates remain at large. Several of the escapees were reportedly PCC members.
The PCC is responsible for numerous prison riots and breakouts in recent years and regularly engage in wide-scale thievery and kidnappings. But in recent days, the gang has taken their brand of urban terror to a new level, causing law enforcement to scrabble in their efforts to stem the tide of mounting violence.
The late-Monday raid was the first large-scale blitz on the PCC since the violence erupted last week Initial reports had authorities rounding up 160 suspects or more, but in the confusion of the late-night raid miscounted and are now reporting that they apprehended 147 suspected members of the gang and have kept over a 100 of them for additional questioning and possible prosecution.
In a statement Tuesday, Sao Paulo Military Police Commandant Alberto Silveira Rodrigues said police were the target of "cowards and treachery" at the hands of the PCC and called for "extreme unity in the fight to thwart further attacks.
"We need to join all the forces and unite in a common purpose," said Rodrigues. Crime in Sao Paulo will never overcome us (the police)."
The commandant's fiery comments appeared to be a call for the state's civil and military police to join forces to fight a common enemy in the PCC. However the two branches of protective services do not always see eye-to-eye in Brazil and collaborative effort may prove difficult.
Sao Paulo's recent crime wave started last week when the PCC orchestrated several simultaneous attacks on police stations in and around the massive city of 20 million people. Military police forces record the first fatality when 25-year veteran Fabio Soares was shot and killed on Sunday.
The aftermath of the attacks have played out like an ongoing horror film in the Brazilian media, with several newspapers carrying front-page photos of a blood-splattered computer where Soares was sitting when he was killed on Sunday.
Since then, the PCC's reign of terror has dominated the daily headlines here and the violence is even seemingly surpassing the notorious bouts of bloodshed in Rio de Janeiro, where drug lords in the city's slums regularly exchange fire with authorities.
Meanwhile, the PCC has expanded their attacks on police to cities throughout Sao Paulo state, one of Brazil's most populous. Their criminal forces seem to materialize anywhere, even firing on police from bikes in a cycle-by shooting in the port city of Santos on Wednesday.
The audacity and frequency of the attacks has left police forces jittery and eager to bolster their defenses. One police station in a Sao Paulo suburb is building a protective wall around their offices as a protective barrier against shootings.
Federal authorities are also playing a role in the effort to end the violence. Brazil's justice ministry announced last week that the government would allocate an additional 30 million reals (about $1 million) to the state's police to aid their defensives against the PCC.
The attacks didn't escape the attention of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva even though he spent all of last week visiting several African nations. The president endorsed the additional funding, though criticized officials for how not just Sao Paulo, but the entire nation, handles organized crime.
"We need to change practically the entire system" for dealing with organized crime, said Lula while on the Angolan leg of his tour, calling for police that are "more intelligent and better prepared."
