COPENHAGEN — Maybe Rio de Janeiro wins the 2016 Games. The Summer Olympics have never been staged in South America, and perhaps Rio overcomes the impact of Barack Obama. Maybe it’s Brazil’s time.

The Rio bid team deserves enormous credit. Rio barely made the IOC cut-off a year ago and now it is widely seen as an entirely legitimate candidate.

Journalistically, I am resolutely agnostic about the outcome of the 2016 vote. Any of the four bids could win — Rio, Madrid, Tokyo, Chicago.

What I am not agnostic about is the process, and with just two days to go before the International Olympic Committee vote here in Copenhagen, an article in the Oct. 5 issue of the New Yorker — this week’s edition of the magazine — makes abundantly clear the IOC evaluation of the four cities simply has not been anywhere near thorough enough in addressing the most sensitive issue facing the Rio campaign.

And that is the gravity of the crime, and crime-related issues, that plague Rio de Janeiro — the staggering reality of it.

“Neglected by government, ruled by drug lords and devastated by violence, Rio de Janeiro’s shantytowns are becoming free-fire zones in a war between cops and criminals,” the New Yorker says on the cover of the story inside, entitled “Gangland,” which paints a vivid picture indeed of life and death inside the shantytowns, or favelas, and asks, “Who controls the streets of Rio de Janeiro?” A link to the magazine’s abstract of the story is here; access to the full story requires a subscription.

Ever since the kidnappings and murders of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches at the 1972 Munich Games, the IOC has proven extraordinarily security conscious. The current IOC president, Jacques Rogge, has said many times that security is the IOC’s No. 1 concern.

Would you know that from the IOC evaluations, this year’s and last’s, of Rio’s 2016 bid?

This was what the IOC said last year in an initial assessment of Rio’s application:

“Crime in parts of Rio de Janeiro was considered to be an issue for the safety of people attending the Olympic Games. Should Rio be selected … assurances regarding protection and safety of persons traveling through certain parts of the city would be required.”

After a four-day visit earlier this year to Rio, the IOC made no mention of needing assurances. It said in a report issued Sept. 2:

“Rio de Janeiro recognizes that it faces safety challenges and is undertaking an ambitious project to enhance the resources, technology and training of its police force by 2012.” The IOC report also said bid leaders and law enforcement officials had also offered a “comprehensive presentation” during the IOC visit that showed “how increased public safety and reductions in crime have been achieved in Rio in recent years.”

Compare those observations, and especially the Sept. 2 gloss, with what was published in the New Yorker (the parentheses in the quote immediately below are not mine - they are part of the magazine story as well):

“Rio de Janeiro is the top-ranked city in the world for ‘violent intentional deaths.’ According to officials, there were just under 5,000 murders last year, half of them drug-gang related. (The numbers don’t include such incidents as ‘rape resulting in death’ or ‘riots resulting in death.’) Twenty-two policemen were murdered. Rio’s police, in turn, kill more people than police anywhere else in the world; in 2008, they acknowledged killing 1,188 people who were ‘resisting arrest,’ or slightly more than three people a day. By comparison, American police killed 371 people — classified as ‘justifiable homicides’ — in the entire United States in the same period. ‘Stray bullets’ are said to kill or wound at least one person every day. By any ordinary calculus, public security in Rio de Janeiro is a disaster.”

The writer of the piece is Jon Lee Anderson, author of a definitive biography of Che Guevara and a widely traveled correspondent who has written extensively from Iraq, among other locales. So save any criticism there — there’s no point.

Also, it’s the New Yorker, which is known for rigorous fact-checking.

Imagine if that paragraph from the New Yorker was about Chicago, Madrid or Tokyo. Put “Chicago” at every instance where it says “Rio de Janeiro.” If that were the state of public security in Chicago — would there even be a Chicago bid?

If the Chicago police were killing three people a day? Are you serious?

Look — every big city has crime issues. More than 25 years ago, as a young reporter in Chicago on my way downtown to work a late-night shift, I got mugged getting off the el train — a guy pulled a knife on me. Luckily, I didn’t get hurt and he ended up getting arrested.

It’s the scope and scale of what’s going in Rio that demands a full and informed report.

Rio’s officials rightly and regularly point out, as Leo Gryner, a senior leader did at a news conference here Wednesday, that the city safely stages events that draw millions, such as Carnival and New Year’s Eve.

The 2007 Pan Am Games “took place without any security incidents,” added Mike Lee, a bid strategist who played a key role in advising London’s winning 2012 effort. Lee also said the Brazilian federal government in concert with Rio officials “have agreed to a $3.5 billion public safety program which will be implemented over the next few years.”

He asserted, “If the Games were to come to Rio in 2016, they would be safe and secure Games.”

Both Lee and Gryner made plain that the Rio presentation Friday to the IOC intends to address the issue.

That segment would seem likely to draw upon this further note in the IOC’s Sept. 2 report, which said without elaboration, “Recognizing that it faces public safety challenges, the city of Rio has taken a new approach with regard to local policing which engages the community in a range of social and sports programs, already showing positive results.”

Gryner said here Wednesday, “We think we have no concerns with dealing with security with events. We have no history of terrorism in Brazil. So no major concerns with events. What we are dealing now with is the new policy of a policing system in Rio that is showing great results and this is part of what we will be telling you and the [IOC] members.”

The New Yorker issue hints at such policies as well. The question, as the IOC readies to vote, is elemental: How long is it going to take to effect systemic change? In this context, 2016 is a short seven years away. (The italic in the quote is, again, from the magazine.)

“In July,” Anderson writes in the magazine, “I spoke to the new chief of Rio’s civil police, Allan Turnowski. I asked him if the security situation in Rio was calamitous.

” ‘Calamitous?’ he said. ‘No. If it was, there would be no way to turn it back. And we can. This isn’t Baghdad yet, or Mexico. We have the capacity to control any part of the city we want. The problem is we can’t stay to finish the job.’ Turnowski spoke boosterishly about a campaign to combat the police-linked militias; his plans to increase the number of police officers; and hopes of improving training and salaries. He mentioned a recently cleaned-up and walled-off favela, Santa Marta, where the government had invested in infrastructure, as a model for the future. I pointed out that Santa Marta was only one favela, and there were a thousand or more others still unattended. He nodded, and said, ‘It will take time.’ “

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 at 4:06 am and is filed under alanabrahamson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.