Security has been stepped up along Rio de Janeiro's popular beaches after swarms of robbers attacked beachgoers and local residents responded with more violence.
Just 10 months before the Olympic Games kick off, groups of young thieves have swept through the popular Ipanema and Copacabana beaches grabbing wallets and cell phones.
National television broadcast images of the incidents, setting off panic. In the videos, victims and police try to chase down suspects, scrambling over people packed onto the sand.
In one video, a policeman pulls out his gun in the middle of the beach after being pelted by balls of sand. In another, a British tourist sobs after robbers, she says, stole everything.
"It's a cat and mouse thing," said Michael Doyle, a flight attendant strolling along a stretch of beach where many of the robberies have taken place. "But there are so many people on the beach, it's hard for the police to catch them."
Grab-and-run robberies
More than 20 people were detained on the beach on a recent, hot Saturday. According to police, many of the thieves are underage gangs who take buses from Rio's poor neighborhoods in the north.
Self-proclaimed vigilantes have retaliated -- in one incident stopping a bus near Copacabana Beach, smashing windows and pulling a suspected thief off, beating him.
Now, police have beefed up security on busy weekends. They've posted 700 officers along beaches and at 17 roadblocks, many on streets coming from the north.
They say they are looking for potential trouble-makers, such as teenagers who didn't pay their bus fare. They also detain unaccompanied minors, handing them over to social services until parents or guardians come to claim them.
Courtesy CNN