A child running through the streets of his favela. Photo: carf (flickr)

Brazil's fight to eliminate the drug trade in its urban slums has been violent and expensive.

An estimated 1,300 people were killed by police in 2007 alone with a staggering murder rate of 150 homicides per 100,000 people in the Rio slums — that's 10 times greater than Chicago's.

And crime is costly. One UN report says the economic and social costs of Brazil's crime represents 10 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product. Spending on crime means there's less money available for education, health care and other social services.

But in the hope of ending the war and expelling the drug trade, the government is changing its policing philosophy and trying a new approach in two slums (favelas in Spanish and Portuguese): Santa Marta and the City of God, made famous by a film of the same name released in 2002.

Rather than conducting what some call "hit-and-run" drug raids, police are entering communities and staying. They are getting to know the residents and attempting to build trust. Coupled with this new policing strategy is a $17 million investment in communities that's paying for new infrastructure such as a soccer field, housing and wireless Internet connections.

“We are working in a way that the state is present in the day-to-day life of poor people," President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva tells the BBC. "In the past it was only the police intervening with lots of brutality which punished the guilty and the innocent — very often only the innocent. Now we have police there, who are becoming a community police force.”

(To hear more from President de Silva, check out this BBC interview.)

Reuters reports that for now, the drug lords are gone from these communities. But while changing strategies offers hope, it won’t be easy to make a permanent change. After years of neglect and abuse, residents are slow to trust. Many are afraid the police will leave and they will have to answer to the drug lords once they return.

“If you ask the residents here what is better — the government or the parallel power — I bet you the huge majority will say the parallel power until they get used to the new reality," says the head of a residents' association in Santa Marta. (Watch a BBC report on how the new policy is changing Santa Marta.)

There are nearly 1,000 slums in Rio, and many question the program’s viability in favelas more sprawling than Santa Marta and the City of God. Although many are skeptical of the new policing strategy, the increased security coupled with the investments in infrastructure is certainly a step in the right direction.