bOPE (Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais, or Special Police Operations Battalion)

BOPE (Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais, or Special Police Operations Battalion), is the elite group of the Military Police of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.


Urban Warfare
Due to the nature of crime in favelas, BOPE units have extensive experience in urban warfareas well as progression in confined and restricted environments. It also utilizes equipment deemed more powerful than traditional civilian law enforcement, such as weapons chambered in .50 BMG.
The armored vehicles - The "Caveirões"
The force has a fleet of armored vehicles, which are known as “Pacificador” (Peacemaker), or “Caveirão”[1] (Big Skull). These vehicles are used in operations in slums (favelas) where BOPE faces intense conflicts with drug dealers. They are equipped with heavy armament: firing portsfor IMBEL MD2 rifle variants of the FN FAL, or the H&K G3 rifle, and in the back and front, .50 caliber machine guns.
Missions
• Break barricades constructed by drug traffickers;
• Extract police officers or civilians injured in confrontations;
• Serve high-risk arrest warrants;
• Hostage rescues;
• Suppress prison rebellions;
• Special missions in swamps or mountainous terrains;

BOPE using the caveirão as a cover

BOPE policemen in training
Criticism
In 2004, the Project on Extrajudicial Executions (New York University School of Law) reported that BOPE had been implicated in the killing of four youths under the false pretense of their being drug traffickers who resisted arrest: "BOPE officers falsified the crime scene to incriminate the victims in an attempt to make them seem like members of a drug trafficking gang. No weapons were found with the victims and none of them had a history of criminal activity."[1] Amnesty International has stated that, "Brazil's police forces use violent and repressive methods that consistently violate the human rights of a large part of the population," and attribute a number of civilian deaths to BOPE in particular.[2] In March 2006, Amnesty specifically condemned the use of the Caveirão, stating that by deploying the vehicle aggressively, and indiscriminately targeting whole communities, it "has become a powerful symbol of the failings of public security policies in Rio de Janeiro. It typifies the police's confrontational and divisive approach to Rio's public security crisis." Amnesty highlighted civilian deaths directly resulting from Caveirão use, and noted that BOPE as a whole, "has been involved in a string of human rights abuses."[3]

"Elite da Tropa"
In 2006, a book by sociologist Luiz Eduardo Soares and one BOPE officer and a former policeman, Major André Batista and Captain Rodrigo Pimentel, provided a semi-fictional account of the daily routine of the BOPE as well as some historical events, based on the experiences of the latter two. The book was controversial at the time of release, and reportedly resulted in Batista being reprimanded and censured by the Military Police. The book was controversial in its description of the BOPE as a "killing machine", as well as detailing an alleged aborted assassination attempt by some police officers on then-governor Leonel Brizola.[2] The book has been made into a movie, Tropa de Elite, directed by José Padilha (the director of Bus 174), with a screenplay by Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Bráulio Mantovani