Foreword

Welcome to the website Rio de Janeiro’s gangs territories. The aim of this web page is to serve as reference to everyone who studies violence, public security, criminology or the daily life of Rio’s slums.

This is also useful for tourists who intend to visit Rio de Janeiro and want to avoid these dangerous areas.

What’s it all about?

This site is composed by maps, located above. These maps show the territories controled by drug gangs and paramilitary groups in Rio de Janeiro’s slums (favelas).

In each map (there are five, as you can see above), it’s possible to see the territory of slums controled by criminal groups, in each zone of the city of Rio de Janeiro (North Zone I/Downtown, North Zone II, West Zone/Bangu, Jacarepagua/Barra and South Zone).

It’s important to understand that these maps do not comprise all the slums controled by gangs. They only show the most important ones. Smaller slums may not be represented in these charts.

What do these maps show?
These maps are based in Google Earth/Google Maps technology and show the territories that are controled by criminal gangs in the city ofRio de Janeiro. The slums are painted in four different colours. The red polygones show the areas dominated by the gang Comando Vermelho – CV (or Red Command). The yellow ones symbolize the areas controled by Amigos dos Amigos – ADA (or Friends of the Friends). The green stains represent Terceiro Comando Puro – TCP (or Pure Third Command). And the blue ones show the favelas controled by the milícias, paramilitary groups formed mainly by police officers and firefighters (firefighters are allowed to use guns in Brazil), that may be still on duty, retired or expelled.

These maps are constantly being updated, due to the inclusion of new slums or to the invasion of the slums by an enemy gang (territory disputes between gangs are quite common in Rio. Sometimes a given gang try to expel another gang from a slum, in order to control that area, amplify its sales and increase its illegal profits).

To contact me, write to vitorabdala@gmail.com