More than 50 arrested during protest against police abuse

Brazilian police detained more than 50 people in Rio de Janeiro after a crowd of slum-dwellers blocked a road with barricades to protest alleged police abuses.

Residents of the northern Rio slum of Morro do Borel staged a violent protest on a busy road in the nearby middle-class district of Tijuca late Saturday, burning two cars, causing traffic jams and panicking drivers, said a local policeman, who asked not to be identified.

The demonstrators said a police patrol had shot and killed three people earlier in the day. The police denied the claims, saying two bystanders were wounded by stray bullets during a shoot-out between the patrol and an unknown number of drug-traffickers.

The bystanders had already been released from a hospital on Sunday morning.

Authorities released all 50 people they had detained.

Violent protests against police abuses are frequent in Rio, where dozens of bystanders are killed each month in shoot-outs between the police and drug gangs that dominate most of the city’s slums.