
An amateur video supposedly showing El Chapo's son arrest in Mexico was posted by multiple social media accounts in mid-October. The amateur video, actually shot in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, features actors playing Rio's elite squad special agents (BOPE) for a police drama series to debut in early 2020. This video, among others, was so realistic and mislead so many people that BOPE had to issue an official "clarification note" on its Facebook page:
"A video shared on social media and WhatsApp groups shows criminals exchange shots with BOPE police officers. We make it clear that it is not a BOPE operation. In fact the video is not a real confrontation, but a film production that has nothing to do with our unit. It is then a work of fiction." --- BOPE, June 19
The video, notably posted by the Twitter account @HellaFeminism on Oct. 18, claimed that it was shot in Culiacán, Mexico, allegedly in the framework of the arrest of El Chapo’s son. The video had more than 2,5 million views at the time of writing this article.
On Oct. 18, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán's son, Ovidio Guzmán López, was found by authorities during a routine patrol in the city of Culiacán, according to the BBC. The police had to leave the area without Guzmán López to avoid further violence, public authorities said.
Many videos of the violence erupting from the city were published on social media and by trusted news sources, including many of a truck set on fire.
Visual clues
The amateur video shows a police, military or paramilitary unit of five soldiers, approaching concrete outdoor stairs from the top, hidden behind piles of bricks. The unit fires from the top of the stairs towards a small crowd gathered at the bottom right of the stairs, which immediately runs away as soon as the first shot is fired. Three soldiers then go down the first set of stairs one by one and continue to fire towards the crowd, which flew the scene.
We also noticed a mountain chain in the background with a distinctive skyline. The street from where the unit is arriving has a slight upwards slope, and the stairs go down by about two floor levels. Therefore, we can suppose that the area is hilly.
In the last ten seconds of the video, we can see the top of the head of a person passively watching the scene and, as the frame pans to the right, the hands of someone else on a carry-on bag, which has an antenna.
Alleged location
Reuters reported on the gang violence following El Chapo’s son arrest and release, in the neighbourhood of Tres Rios, Culiacán. The article reports that an unknown number of gunmen fired “round after round from high-caliber assault rifles.”
However, other Twitter users claimed that the video wasn't shot in Culiacán, and not even in México. A Google Earth Pro research of the area confirmed those claims. No outdoor stairs exist in the neighbourhood of Tres Rios, and the area is flat:

Real location
Using InVid, an EU-funded web browser plugin, we identified a few keyframes of the original Twitter video.
Through a reverse image search on Yandex, a Russian web browser, we uncovered a post on VK, a Russian social media, which shared the same video, posted on June 28. Comments below the post referred to a video game called "Max Payne 3" and the shooting of a film. Other videos retrieved through reverse image search had comments relating to "Tropa de Elite," a very famous Brazilian film featuring conflicts between BOPE and militias.
The video game and the film are intertwined since before the launch of Max Payne 3, the producer suggested to watch the film to its most impatient fans. At launch, some retailers even bundled the video game with the the film and its sequel, "Tropa de Elite 2."
The scene with the Twitter video's outdoor stairs wasn't found in either film. Additionally, two criteria didn't match the original video:
- all the soldiers in the films were wearing black uniforms with hats and uncovered forearms, whereas the alleged soldiers in the video are wearing khaki uniforms without hats and covered forearms.
- none of the scenes had a matching skyline from the one of the video.

Even though the video isn't from a scene of the films Tropa de Elite, it remains likely that these people are actors, since the person filming and the other two are passively watching the scene.

Consequently, assuming that the video could be from the shooting of a film or a TV show and that the scene took place in Rio, we conducted a Google search in Portuguese to find track of other shootings in the city ("gravação Rio," from Portuguese, "filming Rio" with the time limit Jan. 1— June 27).
An article from Globo, Brazil's most prominent daily newspaper, mentioned the filming of a TV show called "O Renegado," in the Complex of Maré, a neighbourhood of Rio. Another search with the additional keywords "Série policial" (from Portuguese, "police television drama") was run, which uncovered a similar article from Oliberal.com.
The search "O Renegado gravação Rio" lead to another version of the original video posted by another Twitter user. This longer video shows a shotgun microphone in the last few seconds, confirming that the scene was professionally filmed. It also contains a geolocation, namely "Morro do Timbau — Maré."
On Google Earth Pro, we first found the same hill, and then found the right side of the hill by matching the skyline to the one of the video. This process was recorded in the following video:
From then, these very distinct outdoor stairs quickly stood out from the satellite imagery. We can assure that the video was shot from the street R. Interna Duzentos e Dois, in the neighbourhood of Maré, in Rio de Janeiro - RJ, Brazil.
Thanks to the pan of the camera of the Twitter video, we've been able to artificially recreate a panorama of the viewpoint of the camera person with Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. Unfortunately, no street or ground view from that street is available, but many visual clues can confirm the accuracy of the location.

The cross-shaped outdoor stairs (red), the path going down (yellow), the beige rectangle of paint on the wall (green), the hole in the wall and the uncovered bricks (pink) all match the original video. The street at the top is also going upwards, and the cars are parked on the same side.
The camera person shot the video from the upper left corner of the stairs, from the pavement, just at the corner of the building opposite to the one shown. Therefore, we can pinpoint the location of the video with a 2-meter precision to the following GPS location: 22°51'48.34"S, 43°14'28.93"W (white arrow).
Context of the shooting
First social media posts and articles about the filming in the neighbourhood of Maré didn't mention the name of the film or TV show. OGlobo referred to "O Renegado" on June 4, while Informe Agora referred to an "undisclosed film" on June 17. Globo published another article on Aug. 18 referring to the TV show as "Arcanjo Renegado" (in English, Renegade Archangel) and announcing its debut in early 2020.
An IMDB page of the TV show already exists, which lists a provisional list of the cast and the technical crew. After a thorough review of all social media accounts of actors, directors and technical staff, we've been able to cross-check the location of the Twitter video and the location of the shooting of the TV show.
An Instagram video posted by actress Danni Suzuki on June 19 features the backstage of the shooting, including two short clips of the same outdoor stairs, filmed from the top, unlike the Twitter video, shot from the side. Relevant clips have been compiled in the opposite video.
Actors Alex Nader, Marcello Melo Jr., Leonardo Brício, Rita Guedes, Erika Januza, Bruno Padilha and Danna Suzuki have all been seen on social media in posts related to the shooting of the show, at the time of the shooting (in late June).

Léo Conceição, who's likely to have been part of the technical crew, posted a short video of himself walking by the outdoor stairs to his Instagram story, 19 weeks ago. This corresponds to the approximate time of the shooting (25th week of 2019, June 17—23).
Social media account of the production company AfroReggae Audiovisual also confirmed the shooting, while future broadcasters Globo Play and Multi Show teased the launch of the TV show. However, searches conducted on the second production company Hungry Man, associate producers Panaroid and Prodigo Films have not been successful.
Time of filming
The Instagram video of actress Danni Suzuki featuring the same scene as the Twitter video was posted on June 20, according to Instagram. By inspecting the timestamp element on Google Chrome, we can find the exact UTC in ISO 8601 format. By converting the timestamp to a more readable format, we found that the video was posted on June 19, 2019, at 22:30:13 (UTC), meaning 19:30:13 in Brazil (UTC-3).
Therefore, we know for sure that the scene was shot anytime before that. No video posted earlier than Suzuki's has been found.
A black and white photograph taken by one of the screenwriters was posted on Instagram on June 19 at 17:49:35, and shows similar piles of bricks on the sides of the road:
An article from June 17 proves the shooting had already started in the neighbourhood of Maré, although it remains unsure when the scene from the Twitter video was exactly shot.
Director Heitor Dhalia posted on Instagram on June 19, stating:
"Who's afraid of the tide? Historical footage at Complexo da Maré. The community welcoming us with open arms. Very exciting these days. Arcanjo Renegado." --- Heitor Dhalia, June 19
Consequently, we can attest that the scene occurred anytime between June 17—19, although it is more likely to have happened on the 19th, since no video from the scene emerged on the web before that date. The latest time the video could have been filmed on June 19 is 18:36, since the scene wasn't shot at night and the sunset occurred at that time on that day.
Identity of the actors

In spite of the low resolution of the videos and the uniforms worn by the actors, we identified the second actor going down the stairs, who is Alex Nader. He is the only one looking towards the camera in a Twitter video from @VictorPhelipe0, which helped us to recognise his face with his distinctive haircut. The third actor going down wears a hat, and always does across all backstage photos. It must be the actor "Roosevelt" (we couldn't find his first name) unless his stuntman replaced him.
The list of special agents and their stuntmen, as found on Instagram, is shown on the right.
Assuming the scene was always shot with the exact same pattern of movements of the special agents, or assuming the scene was shot in only one take, the first sniper could be Marcello Melo Jr. We can't be entirely sure of this assumption, but the actor is the tallest on backstage photos (example 1 and example 2) and seems to be taller than his colleagues on the video from @VictorPhelipe0. He's bald or close-shaven and has a dark skin. It would also make sense story-telling-wise, since he is the first actor to fire and he is the lead actor of the TV show.

Identity of the video's author
From our research, the video was posted on multiple platforms (LiveLeak as found by Teyit.org, YouTube, Twitter and VK) in two versions (@HellaFeminist's and @RiodeNojeira's). We can assume that the original video is at least 29-second long and has no geolocation tag.
A second video from @VictorPhelipe0 offers a pan to the right from above the stairs. Again, using Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, we recreated a panorama of the scene. The location of the technical crew confirms our first claim. Although we can't identify the person who filmed the scene with a smartphone, we can assume that it was someone working on the set (the neighbourhood must have been temporarily closed to residents and the public). It is very likely that the author of the video is one of the four persons in the red circle.

Going through the social media accounts of the people who allegedly worked on the TV show (from the makeup artist to stuntmen, producers and technical crew) no additional information has been uncovered.
One video, multiple fake news
Through this particular video, we get a preview of how fake news are spread by using the same footage with different captions. @HellaFeminist shared the video to illustrate the arrest of El Chapo's son, Ansel Flores said it was police violence in Caracas, Venezuela, @RiodeNojeira and @marcus_souza11 implied it was a real shooting from Rio's police, a generic police "operation conflict" according to Remedy Bible and a clash between the Mexican army and drug cartels for Haberturk.com.
As spotted by Teyit.org, a Turkish independent fact-checking website, the video has even been shared by Daniel Silveira, a member of Bolsonaro's government. He captioned it with the following sentence: "And to close the night, there's nothing better than to see a tramp going to the ditch." He added two hours later: "Guys, it's a scene in a series. I just posted to satirise the fact that it's good to see tramps being neutralised."
Conclusion: real video but misleading caption
The video shared by @HellaFeminist was real but was captioned with misleading content. Whether this was intentional or not remains unclear. We've not been fully successful in finding the author of the video, although we assume it was someone from the technical crew; and in searching the exact time of filming, although we defined a short period.
It has to be noted that Brazil heavily relies on WhatsApp rather than "traditional" social media — Brazil is WhatsApp's fourth market. This might have prevented us from tracing back the origin of the video, since all messages sent through it are private and encrypted.
Nevertheless, we managed to locate precisely the video in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, identified the actors filmed and found the context of the shooting.
Commentaires