Rio drug gang fed rivals to reptiles
Rio de Janeiro police found two caimans in a raid on one of the city’s slums, saying the crocodile-like reptiles were used by drug traffickers to intimidate their enemies and dispose of bodies.Police were conducting a raid in the west of the Brazilian city looking for a drug gang boss when they came across the animals in the backyard of a house in the Coreia slum.
“The caimans are a symbol of power of the traffickers. When they catch a rival, they kill him and give him to the caimans,” Ronaldo Oliveira, head of the robbery and car theft unit, was quoted as saying on O Globo newspaper’s website.
Television footage showed police officers carefully placing the small reptiles in the back of a truck.
Rio’s heavily armed drug gangs, with names like “Red Command” and “Friends of Friends,” control many of the city’s hundreds of slums and regularly battle over territory.
