Security nightmare. Tuesday January 17, 2011

There was an incident near us today that brought home to me just what a nightmare the security is in Sao Paulo. I was driving to a friend’s house when we saw a helicopter hovering, very close and very low. It just hovered there for what seemed like ages. Next, a police car crossed in front of us, clearly in a hurry to get to the road below the helicopter.

Marcelo was very interested and turned on the radio to one of the local channels. As we proceeded further down the street, I looked towards the area that was clearly causing so much interest to see the end of it completely awash with flashing lights, sirens and police.

We turned along another street only to see the “heavy” police coming along beside us. You can tell them a mile off – a big SUV car, different uniforms and if we could have seen them, heavy weight armour. Clearly, something serious was happening.

All sorts of things were going through my mind. We have recently had the incidents in Rio, where the police have taken out several of the drug barons that control the Favelas. This clean up, over several days, had involved huge numbers of police, special squads and helicopters. Several people were killed but it had the desired effect of getting the drug lords out of the area – until, that is, a new wave come along to replace them.

As I reached my friend’s apartment on the 18th floor, we had a great view of what was going on. So did everyone else as the balconies were full of people. One guy had his video camera out – go figure.

We later found out that what had happened was that a gang of thieves had entered an apartment building with the intent to rob as many apartments as possible. This is actually quite common. They break in, hold people hostage and then go apartment to apartment, breaking-in and stealing whatever they can. They can tell by the location and quality of the building how rich the pickings will be.

Even though the apartments have “security”, it is often an inside job, with the security guards giving the thieves the knowledge they need.

We live in what they call a closed condominium. There are nine houses surrounded by a high concrete fence. On top of that fence is an electric fence. To get into the basement garage, you have to be let in by the security guards who have bullet-proofed guard house at the front facing the road. If you are on foot, they open a gate into a secure area and once in, the gate behind closes before the gate in front opens.

We have heard all sorts of stories about break-ins recently. In our neighbourhood, the latest incident was that thieves targeted a particular car, got into the back and held the driver at gunpoint so as to be let into the garage area of the condominium. Once in the garage, they were then able to go house to house, breaking in and stealing whatever they could carry.

So I never take security for granted and know that there are people whose job it is to keep us safe. When we moved into this house we had a safe room created with a steel door. The idea is that if anything happens, we have time to get to the safe room and sound the alarm. We have cameras literally everywhere, covering every entrance and the outside spaces, (no sunbathing topless in our back garden). However, given all this we are about to have bars on some of the windows and bullet proof glass in the front and have just had the front door strengthened with five steel bolts.

It all may sound completely over the top, but I have to say that it makes me feel a lot safer at night and especially when I am here on my own.

Marcelo of course has made it his business to find out everything about everyone in the condominium. Not only the people living there, but also the maids and drivers that work for the other families. We have a team of guards at the front gate who together with the maintenance men look after the nine houses. Even when we hired our maid, Marcelo went to see where she lived to make sure that she was living in a respectable area. It is not unknown for maids that come from the Favelas to be “persuaded” to give information about their employers.

So today’s event turned out to be an apartment burglary.

From Marcelo I gather the following:-

The good news is that the police were on the scene very rapidly and not many apartments were burgled.
The bad news is that the thieves got away.

I guess in tomorrow’s papers we will find out more details, if we can get the translation right.