Thundercats

Yesterday the Washington Post had a front page (at least online it was front page) article about a gang called Thundercats that had been operating in Recife.

A friend of mine told me, more than a year ago, that there had been a gang operating a drug market in a neighborhood near hers. The police came in, arrested everyone in the gang (and probably a few people who happened to be nearby, too), and then left. And so Thundercats stepped in to operate the drug market and nothing changed.

The gang was crippled, if not destroyed, in a series of arrests that started last April and ended last August. What I can't understand is why the Post decided to write about it now. The Post didn't offer any evidence that the arrests have had any significant impact on crime in Recife, or that the police operation has served as a model for police in other states.

In any case, the Brazilian media (in the form of Globo) loves the "positive" attention that the article represents.