Old strategies and new approaches towards policing drug markets in Rio de Janeiro

Sharing Authority: The Politics and Practice of Community Policing in the Brazilian Slum

“…In an impact assessment, for example, Ignacio Cano () found that homicides in UPP‐targeted communities had dropped by 75 percent. Four years later, homicides had increased generally in Rio de Janeiro, but were still 50 percent lower in UPP areas (Cano and Ribeiro ). Other studies revealed dramatic improvements in residents' sense of security.…”

“Ruim com ela, pior sem ela”: o desejo de continuidade das UPPs para além das Olimpíadas

“…45186 of 17 March 2015. This legislation established the nuances of this new form of public security provision: (i) emphasis on the resumption of territorial control of the favelas, by reducing the armed power of drug traffickers, even if this did not mean elimination of drug trafficking (Cano and Ribeiro, 2016); (ii) exclusive use of police officers in front-line activities, to avoid police corruption (Corrêa et al, 2016); and (iii) a concern to increase security and guarantee peace through the reduction of shootings and lethal violence (Magaloni, Franco and Melo, 2015).…”

“…Perhaps the most defining element of this distance between the meaning and practice of community policing is the purpose of policy: the resumption of favela territory, dominated by drug traffickers (Vaz, 2014), to the detriment of increasing the legitimacy of police action through approximation with the community. It is, therefore, a form of police action that has an eminently repressive dimension, even if this does not mean reducing drug trafficking (Cano and Ribeiro, 2016).…”

“…), featured on posters, leaflets, t-shirts and banners during the protests, in addition to being widely spread on social networks". The belief in the discontinuity of the UPP as a public policy may be related to the residents' understanding of the social dynamics in the city of Rio de Janeiro, which is directly connected to the memory of other community policing programs already developed by PMERJ (Cano and Ribeiro, 2016). On the other hand, the desire for UPPs continuity is based on the experience of this community policing in all its limits and possibilities and, therefore, it is associated with police practice and, of course, its effects on the life in the favela (Oliveira et al 2014).…”

“…3 It is common in these studies the use of qualitative methods to identify the demands, problems and expectations surrounding the establishment, institutionalization and, in the last years, the possibility of extinction of the program. The few existing quantitative studies seek to correlate the arrival of UPPs with the reduction of crime rates in pacified communities (Oosterbaan and Van Wijk, 2015;Cano, Borges and Ribeiro, 2012); to measure the impact of policies on reducing police violence (Magaloni, Franco and Melo, 2015) and on the reorganization of the drug market (Cano and Ribeiro, 2016); and to understand what police think about this new format of security provision in favela areas (Soares et al, 2010;Musumeci et al, 2013). Almost no quantitative work is intended to understand how the residents of pacified areas evaluate the policy (Oliveira et al, 2014) and what their expectations for the project after the Olympics would be (Musumeci, 2017), since the UPPs have always been directly associated to mega-events based in the city (Ribeiro and Santos Junior, 2013).…”