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RIO DE JANEIRO — About 3,000 police officers and soldiers moved into one of the largest slums here on Sunday in a pivotal effort by the government to assert control over lawless areas of the city ahead of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics. In an operation that began before dawn, military helicopters buzzed the sky, and tanks rolled through the narrow streets of the Rocinha slum. Elite police squads patrolled the alleys, and snipers perched on rooftops. The authorities said the occupation was an effort at the “pacification” of the sprawling slum, or favela,sacs louis vuitton and it was carried out peacefully. By early Sunday evening, the police, accompanied by contingents from the Brazilian Army and Navy, had not fired a shot. Under the government plan to assert control over the favelas in Rio, the authorities have brought in specially trained community police officers and have tried to improve basic services. But the process has not always gone smoothly. Street battles last year in the Complexo do Alem?o, a patchwork of slums, left more than 30 people dead before security forces won control of the area. The operation in Rocinha — which is located above some of Rio’s most exclusive residential neighborhoods — was considered the most important step yet in the effort to impose order. Officials said the operation’s success was made possible by months of intelligence gathering and by the arrest last week of Ant?nio Bonfim Lopes, the drug lord known as Nem, who was said to have effectively ruled Rocinha. “Some say it’s good; others say it’s not,” said Nilson Ferreira, 31, a doorman who lives in Vidigal, a slum near Rocinha that was also occupied on Sunday by soldiers and the police. “For me, it’s fine,” said Mr. Ferreira, who watched the police clean an area where drug traffickers had thrown oil to prevent vehicles from passing. The occupation of Rocinha and Vidigal, which command spectacular views of Rio, is also a crucial phase in the crackdown against drug traffickers that control many of the city’s slums. The preparations to enter Rocinha, a hillside community of more than 80,000 people that boasts a thriving assortment of businesses and an emerging tourism trade, involved months of planning, officials said. Critics said the operation, called “Shock of Peace,” seemed somewhat overdone, given the relative calm in Rocinha compared with the atmosphere in other favelas in Rio, a city with a population of 11.8 million. “The helicopters flying overheard are more Coppola than Vietnam,” said Luiz Eduardo Soares, a security expert and author, in a Twitter message that referred to the movie “Apocalypse Now,” the director Francis Ford Coppola’s fictional account of the Vietnam War. Mr. Soares also criticized the news media frenzy ahead, calling it “showtime” and saying that it fed the middle class’s exaggerated fears. Still, the operation allowed officials to highlight the security gains of recent years, which have made parts of Rio considerably safer. The city’s security chief, José Mariano Beltrame, said on television that the Rocinha operation had returned “dignity and territory to those who haven’t had them for 30 years.” Searches by the police in the Laboriaux area of Rocinha turned up drugs and caches of weapons and ammunition. The police also guided journalists through the luxurious three-story villa of a Rocinha drug trafficker called Peixe, or Fish, who was arrested last week, showing them his hot tub, swimming pool and collection of imported spirits. But such displays belied the sense of normalcy that prevailed in Rocinha on Sunday. With the authorities surveying the scene from helicopters, residents gathered to chat while sharing tall bottles of beer. The wheels of commerce also began turning as they had before the incursion.