In preparation for the second phase of Operation "Rio Wants Security and Peace" ("O Rio Quer Segurança e Paz"), Brazil Defense Minister Raul Jungmann announced on July 28 that some 8,500 military personnel will be joining the roughly 1,500 already deployed to Rio de Janeiro state in an effort to clamp down on rising insecurity.

"This operation aims to use intelligence to reach organized crime -- its command chains and methods -- to reduce its operational capacity and to strike at it," Jungmann said according to a Defense Ministry press release.

However, Jungmann stated that unlike in 2015, when Brazil's military police assumed control of various marginalized neighborhoods known as favelas amid growing violence, the military will not be occupying such areas this time around.

"We won't have occupations, as we had in Maré," the defense minister said, referring to the Complexo do Maré favela, which saw a military deployment in 2014. "We can have, eventually, patrols, but they will always occur and will be successively followed by other, more diverse operations."

The day after the announcement, when making a presentation about the results of the first phase of the military operation, Jungmann reiterated his focus on intelligence gathering as key to the initiative's success.

"Only intelligence will allow us to strike against organized crime and reduce its operational capacity," he said according to a separate Defense Ministry press release.

Jungmann also stated that the new operations would seek to avoid past mistakes.

"We're not going to repeat the previous strategy of long stays, doing patrols. We're not going to occupy communities," he said. "We're going to continue in the same breath of surprise. We will not announce when we will start or finish phases of these operations, but I want to say that we are already preparing the next one." Read more