Members of a powerful criminal gang shot at police and vandalized bank branches before dawn on Wednesday in Sao Paulo, putting authorities in Brazil's biggest city on alert for the fourth time in as many months, according to Reuters. Police said the attacks, in which no one was hurt, were unleashed by the First Command of the Capital gang, or PCC, to protest the transfer of 76 prison inmates including gang leaders. More than 200 people, including police, gangsters and innocent civilians, have been killed in successive waves of violence launched by the PCC since May. The attacks have rattled people in Sao Paulo, the world's third-largest city and South America's business center, and had an impact on a presidential election set for Oct. 1. Polls show that voters blame opposition candidate Geraldo Alckmin for failing to get a grip on public security when he was state governor. He is now trailing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva badly in opinion polls. In the latest violence, a hooded man set fire to four automatic teller machines in a bank branch overnight in the Brooklin area, police said. Another bank branch was also hit in the middle-class area of Sumare. Gangsters also opened fire on a police post in the industrial suburb of Sao Bernardo do Campo. Incidents were also reported in Ribeirao Preto city, where gunmen shot at a bank and a detention center. The PCC has said the attacks are a protest against conditions in Brazil's notoriously overcrowded prisons. Isolating gang leaders in maximum security prisons appears in Lula's election manifesto, unveiled on Tuesday.
