{"id":179329,"date":"2026-02-15T19:05:22","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T19:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/179329\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T19:05:22","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T19:05:22","slug":"rio-cops-in-money-heist-masks-catch-carnival-phone-thieves-nbc-los-angeles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/179329\/","title":{"rendered":"Rio cops in \u2018Money Heist\u2019 masks catch Carnival phone thieves \u2013 NBC Los Angeles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbclosangeles.com\/tag\/brazil\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Rio de Janeiro<\/a> police officers kitted themselves out as thieves from the series \u201cMoney Heist\u201d and as Jason Voorhees from the \u201cFriday the 13th\u201d horror movie franchise to blend in with crowds <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbclosangeles.com\/tag\/holidays\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">celebrating Carnival<\/a> and catch criminals stealing cellphones.<\/p>\n<p>Carnival officially kicked off on Friday in Rio, and for many revelers participating in the megalopolis\u2019 raucous, dazzling street parties, one of the biggest concerns is holding on to their phones \u2014 as thefts are all too common.<\/p>\n<p>To tackle this phenomenon, officers in the Santa Teresa neighborhood Friday donned costumes to fly under thieves\u2019 radar. The undercover agents noticed a woman snatching a cellphone from someone\u2019s hand, followed her and saw her hand the device to an accomplice, Rio\u2019s civil police said in a statement Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>Police arrested the pair and found five cellphones in their possession.<\/p>\n<p>That wasn\u2019t the first time Brazilian police officers wearing costumes have sought to mingle with the crowds during festivities to catch wrongdoers.<\/p>\n<p>Last Sunday, police officers dressed as characters from \u201cGhostbusters\u201d caught a woman with 12 cellphones stolen in downtown Sao Paulo. A day prior, officers in alien outfits caught a man with three phones hidden under his clothing.<\/p>\n<p>Cellphone thefts have declined overall in Brazil, according to the 2025 annual report by the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety think-tank. They dropped from approximately 980,000 per year in 2022 to some 850,000 in 2024.<\/p>\n<p>But fear of both armed robberies and discreet pocketing of cellphones remains high, and opinion polls consistently show that violence and crime are Brazilians\u2019 main concern.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rio de Janeiro police officers kitted themselves out as thieves from the series \u201cMoney Heist\u201d and as Jason&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[6908,48,52,51,47,50,49],"class_list":{"0":"post-179329","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-brazil","9":"tag-la","10":"tag-la-headlines","11":"tag-la-news","12":"tag-los-angeles","13":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","14":"tag-los-angeles-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}