Tactical Training

“Stops and frisks must be carried out vigorously!” I have joined a group of police officers from Alemão on their weeklong recycling: The training course that the institutional leadership has prescribed in response to the “crisis” at the UPPs. The police’s Special Forces oversee the first five days of the course, which are mainly centered around urban warfare and patrol techniques, while a sixth day at the UPPs command and control center focuses on theoretical lessons focused on practices of “proximity policing.” Right now, an officer from BOPE is explaining how to search suspects during patrol. The officers must not leave any room for doubt—it can be taken as a sign of weakness. He shows them the correct procedure. Gun raised, he points the weapon at a police officer playing the suspect and orders: “Resident! Place your hands on the wall!” His voice is loud, deep, and firm. It emanates authority and force. The officers are reminded to be careful not to hurt the suspect during the search, or else they might get in trouble with the judge: “The treatment that you give your client depends on what the client is asking for. If you make a mess [the judges] will give you a hard time.” To emphasize the importance of proper conduct, he tells them an anecdote of a suspect who was released by the judge due to bruising and encourages the officers to moderate their use of force to avoid similar situations. It should be applied progressively—the public might accuse them of abuse of force if they go straight for the gun (Fig. 7.1).

Fig. 7.1
A photograph of police officers on patrol with machine guns in Santa Marta.

Police officers on patrol with machine guns in Santa Marta, April 2015

Full size image

Even if people in Rio consider June to be a winter month, the sunshine is hot enough to make the group of police officers flock together under the shade of a big, solitary Acacia tree. There’s no other shelter from the sun. We’re standing in the middle of an open, dusty field surrounded by the ramshackle ruins of an old military base that looks like it has been out of use for decades. Now it functions as the headquarters and training grounds of the Military Police’s Special Units. I’ve been shown some sexy images of the modern building complex that will be built here in the future but the only building that has been erected is by no means as attractive as the renders. It’s built in the same light materials as the UPPs of Complexo do Alemão—prefabricated walls made of aluminum and Styrofoam; thin saggy doors that leave open gaps in the doorways when they, against all odds, manage to close; windows that appear to be falling out of their frames.

A few weeks ago, I was at the Coordinating Offices of the Pacifying Police (CPP), which oversees the UPPs, to speak with the Major in charge of the operational (strategic and tactical) dimensions of the pacification. The Major was running late, and I was invited to join the police’s Easter celebrations while I waited. The UPP Commanders, around a hundred officers or so, had gathered for mass in the CPP’s meeting hall. The service was held by two ministers: One catholic and one evangelical. They blessed the police’s efforts to bring peace to the favelas. After the sermon ended, a musical band with police officers played a few songs of praise while the congregation nibbled at the sweets, coffee, and soda that had been set out on a table at the back of the room.

“Today, the situation is as follows: At several UPPs there are places where the police can’t patrol without getting into gunfights.” The Major is a former officer from BOPE, as most of the officers at the CPP. “We see that the policemen don’t know how to act in critical situations, when they’re under attack. They don’t know how to handle these situations; they don’t know how to hold their positions.” The Major’s voice is low and calm. He is well known among the officers at Alemão, who have told me that “he has killed over a hundred criminals” and is connected to the militias. Sitting in his office he strikes me as a quite normal, even nice, likable, and polite guy. I find it hard to imagine him as a ruthless killer.Footnote 1

He is talking about how the leadership of the pacification project evaluated the challenges at the UPPs: “[We found that] when the police officers got into armed combat, they retreated to the base. [When that happens,] you lose the area,” the Major explains: “Having [identified these challenges] we created a product that we call the strategic realignment.” The goal of the realignment, he says, is to identify the strategic areas of each community and use advanced bases—armored or entrenched posts—to occupy these areas. Meanwhile, UPP officers are taken off the street to receive tactical training at the headquarters of the Special Operation’s Units, while officers from Choque and BOPE remain in place in the favelas. “Today our objective is to maintain the occupation but in a safer manner for our patrol officers. At the moment that is our biggest goal: To guarantee the security of our officers—to keep them at strategic points in the community in a safe manner.” When the officers feel threatened, they become stressed and vulnerable, and make poor decisions.

Back at the training grounds of the Special Forces, the crisp sound of shattering dry leaves blends with the steady rhythm of the group of police officers jogging along the cobbled streets that crisscross the military base. They wear bulletproof vests and are armed with machine guns, a heavy piece of equipment to carry while running. I trot along with them. I’m not armed but wear a bulky and sweaty vest like the officers. The overgrown and abandoned buildings act as barriers we must overcome, pulling ourselves through tall windows or crawling beneath low walls. A Sub-Lieutenant from BOPE is leading the exercise. “You just stay in my shadow,” he says looking me straight in the eyes. Then he faces the officers: “Control what he writes before he finishes his work. Make sure he doesn’t write about the terrible physical condition of the troop. Everybody knows that the police beats up women and children, but they have no idea how bad shape we’re in!” We laugh. The Sub-Lieutenant is not exaggerating. The pace is steady but slow, still we can’t have run more than 500 meters before the first officer is falling behind. Daví, one of the most athletic Soldiers at Alemão (most of them sport voluminous beer bellies) starts to chant a grito de guerra (lit. ‘war cry’; cadence call) to lift the morale of the group:

Verse

Verse There are people that criticize because they don’t know how to act [Tem gente que critica porque não sabe fazer] There are many that admire and even stop to look [Tem muitos que admiram e até param para ver] Those of you who criticize me come do what I am doing [Você que me critica vem fazer o que eu faço] Halfway down the road you are going to feel tired [No meio do caminho você vai sentir cansaço]

The officers yell back in unison. Once the troop starts chanting, something happens. A rush, a special feeling of unity runs through the group.Footnote 2 It’s like we have all changed: I’m no longer an anthropologist, I’m a war reporter in a Hollywood movie. The police officers are no longer insignificant men from Rio’s suburbs and favelas, they are action heroes going to war to fight a heroic battle against evil. It feels like we are one. One team, one troop, one unit, one family—the blue family. I haven’t shared this experience with the officers before, this feeling of being a part of their community. Yes, they are carrying guns and I’m not, but I’m running by their side, chanting along with them. To the police officers, I’m no longer a nerd on intellectual pedestal—a person who criticizes them but doesn’t have any solutions to offer; a person without the courage to do what they are doing. I’m there with them every morning at seven, day after day, and I stay until the end. The commanding officers from the Special Forces are suspicious of me, they don’t want me here. The patrol officers from Alemão see that too. I’m not siding with their superiors; I’m siding with them.

About sixty of the officers from Alemão are at the training camp this week. I know many of them already—Nazareth is here, and so is Anderson, Felipe, and Daví. But many of them I’ve only briefly seen at the base. The officers who ignored me when I first arrived at the UPP are warming up to me. They call me their base mascot. I’ve been given a nickname: Noruga—the Norwegian. “Hey, Noruga, when will you join the force?” one of them asks. “Ha! For the love of God, don’t become a police officer!” Anderson exclaims. “Our job is hell.”

Eventually, we arrive at the open field in front of the shooting range where a group of instructors are waiting. They give us no time to think. The officers are told to load their rifles quickly, and then the instructors grab each of us by the handle at the neck of our vests and drag us onto the shooting range. The ammunition chamber of one of the officers falls out of his rifle as the instructor seizes him. He is reprimanded in front of his colleagues. I’m forced to the ground behind the group and told to cover my ears. Each officer is placed behind a barrel, fifty meters ahead of seven cardboard figures. They represent possible targets, some holding a gun, others a microphone or a pair of glasses, and some are dressed as police. The officers are ordered to identify and shoot the targets they consider to be a threat as quickly as possible. The gunfire thunders across the shooting range. It must be heard in the favela lying right next to the military complex.

Afterwards, I inspect the results along with one of the instructors. “You killed them all!” I say jokingly to one of the officers, trying to lighten the mood. He has an embarrassed look on his face. The instructors jot down the results. Then they tell us to gather at the end of the shooting range while they remain at the opposite side. They have distributed several teargas canisters among them and throw them onto the field between us. The air is filled with thick, white smoke. “Run, run, run, run!” I look over at Anderson, who’s standing next to me. He grins: “You should have seen us at the Police Academy!” As recruits they were showered with pepper spray and teargas to toughen up. I grit my teeth and run into the cloud of gas alongside the rest of the soldiers. It stings in the eyes and burns in the lungs. Many of the men are coughing. I feel the burning run through my body.

After the exercise, a senior BOPE officer with a large combat knife in his uniform belt gathers the group. He stresses the importance of being able to act quickly and efficiently under stress: “The ideal is that you destroy the enemy and return to your homes!” He pauses: “We aren’t training you to be cowards, we are training you to be combatants!”

The week with the Special Units is intense. The days start early and last until dusk. There’s a lot of content to cover: The police officers practice picking their weapons apart and putting them back together; they are taught how to carry their machine guns when they round corners or storm buildings—so that the muzzles can’t be seen by their enemies before the officers can see them, and are able to shoot; they practice evacuating vehicles while under fire—the instructors shoot at them with softguns so that they can sense if they are hit.

We are also taught how to act to impose fear and respect. One of the instructors explains the importance of “the psychological factor.” A police officer who carries good equipment and knows how to use it warrants respect. “If you see a group of bandits, who do you kill? You kill the one that looks the weakest! You don’t pick the one that looks strongest and toughest. The thugs also think that way.” He exemplifies his point referring to the American Army’s use of Tomahawks (battle axes) in Iraq and compares it to the choice of armament on patrol in the favela: “Just imagine a tactical patrol unit armed with handguns and one carrying machine guns and see what difference it makes!”

A plump, panting senior officer from Choque gives a class on the use of so-called “non-lethal” armament. There is a selection of various weapons lined up in a row in front of us so the officers can get familiarized with the different tools at their disposal: Various cans and grenades with pepper spray, teargas, and pyrotechnics. There are two kinds of shock grenades (the police call them bomba de efeito moral or “moral effect bomb” since they are supposed to scare and “demoralize” the victim): One just makes a loud explosion, and the other lights up as well. The weapons serve different purposes. For example, while pepper spray canisters can be used both to incapacitate and disperse a crowd, canisters with foam or gel are generally used to incapacitate a single individual. The officer highlights the difference with an example: Gel and foam can be used on a driver who doesn’t want to exit his vehicle if his wife and children are inside. Spraying would target everyone indiscriminately, while foam only targets the driver. “If used the wrong way, non-lethal armament can kill,” he says, and tells us about an officer from Choque who killed a 14-year-old boy with a pepper spray canister. One of the officers laughs. To stress the gravity, the instructor adds: “The mother of the child pressed charges against the police officer when she found out [what had happened].”

The week of training ends with a guest lecture about the “history of the machine gun” and a pep talk held by the Colonel in command of the Special Units to boost the officers’ morale. He concludes the motivational speech with a reminder to the group of officers: “We aren’t here to play heroes; we are professionals that work within the framework of the law.” The shooting exercise was intended to make them reflect on the results, rather than evaluating their shooting skills. Above all, they wanted to remind the officers of how easy it is to make mistakes. “Remember, bullets don’t just disappear, every bullet stops somewhere,” the Colonel says, and asks the officers to be patient, despite the recent spur of violence: “The pacification is an eighteen-year project. [It succeeded] when a new generation of youth has grown up in a stable environment, without having to hide under their beds, without having to live with the police entering their homes with frequency!”

Human Rights

“Research shows that young people are often hostile to the police because they are used to shootings, beatings and bombs.” The female psychologist is tall and slim. She is elegantly dressed, wearing a knee-long skirt and high-heeled shoes. Her blonde hair falls softly over her shoulders. “Does that make sense?” The question is directed at the men sitting in the lecture hall of the CPP. They are here to undergo a psychological evaluation and receive training in non-violent communication strategies and human rights, before returning to Alemão following last week’s tactical course. “No!” The officers protest. It’s because they are used to partying, smoking marihuana, and that kind of lifestyle, one of them objects. “People are stupid and ignorant, and Alemão still hasn’t been pacified. The people there are wrong. To them what’s right is wrong.”

Following the lesson, the psychologist approaches me for a talk. We sit down and she suggests I turn on the tape-recorder so that I don’t have to write while she speaks. “It’s hard for the men to admit that they are scared to death when they have to spend time in places where they can be hurt,” she says. “The guys can’t admit certain things, for example that they are getting [mentally] ill. The guy who gets ill is looked down on by his colleagues, he gets mocked. […] The officers assume the role of the fearless guy, sometimes even trying to gain respect in the areas where they live. So, when they are off duty, they want to take control of their neighborhood.” Understood this way, the militias could also be seen as an expression of the same macho bravado which I’ve seen among police officers. The psychologist continues: “The macho culture is very strong [within our institution]. And proximity policing […] requires approximation, it requires dialogue, it requires listening to the other, things that […] we still associate a lot more with the women than with the men. […] I think it makes it harder for them to put themselves in that position. They would much rather be the guy who is skilled, who gets into a gunfire and is fearless, than the guy who listens, who helps. […] The guy is a warrior. He likes being a warrior. He likes being the guy who makes things happen, who shoots, who kills. […] It’s a very strong driving force, that warrior thing.” The psychologist describes it as if the police is running in circles, always ending up in the same place: “The war on drugs, that’s what they call it, right? The war on drugs,” she emphasizes each word. “The war on drug trafficking. They talk a lot about that: Ahh, Alemão, is at war! They use that word all the time, don’t they?” But war has a price, she says. “You’re not getting out of that unscarred. You don’t get out of that saying ahhh, I’m great, I went to war, I killed, I almost died, I’m great. No. We, notice that they like to say so, they banalize it, they think okay, so I was in a shooting episode, that’s normal. At first, [the police officer] thinks that it doesn’t affect him. But then he gets home and starts quarreling with his wife. He gets more aggressive, irritated by nothing. And then he starts connecting the dots. […] Finally, he might admit that, yes, I’ve really become more aggressive. Sometimes, I can’t let go of all the aggression from work, and it surfaces at home. Then they come to us saying, yes, I drink more, I don’t sleep well… The alcohol consumption among officers is astonishing. They drink a lot. Sometimes it’s a form of self-medication—to sleep or to relax. Other times they get tranquilizers or sleep medicine, either illegally or through a psychiatrist.”Footnote 3

The psychologist explains that many police officers choose to withdraw from their duties. “It’s very common to hear them say: I can’t fight the system, so I let it be. I try to hide as well as I can. Recently, I heard an officer talking about that: Listen, I’ve worked at the internal affairs [of the police], and I saw so many horrible things… And when I tried to fight it, I almost ended up harming myself, so I found it’s better if I don’t do anything.” At the other end of the scale, you have the policemen who fully embrace the war no matter the cost: “They’ll say no, this is my mission, and I’ll go all in.” Due to the lack of institutional support, the police officer who is out on the street doing his work sees two possible outcomes, she explains: “Either death, the guy ends up dying or wounded during his service—or being jailed, for getting involved in a situation where he kills someone, hurts someone, he makes a mistake and gets arrested.” These prospects demotivate the officers: “He’ll say damn it, the future of those of us who want to act, who come with a desire to do police work, is either prison or death.”

Since they are at the bottom of the military hierarchy, at the bottom of the pyramid, the Soldiers feel powerless. “The military structure works according to the following logic: The Soldier follow the rules or orders of their superiors, and there is no room for questions, right? He is just the guy who executes [the order], that obeys.” Meanwhile, the Soldiers are held responsible for their actions. The psychologist says that this distorts the meaning of hierarchy. Hierarchy isn’t giving orders and making the guy who carries them out responsible. Hierarchy is supposed to attribute responsibility at the highest level. “[The Soldier] is left with the worst part: Both the blame and the responsibility, right?” When the men are forced to follow orders that they don’t see the use of and can’t talk to their superiors about their experience, it’s incredibly harmful: “It leads to [mental] health problems. Even if he is the one taking orders, he is also a thinking individual, right? He’s not just a machine.”

“Humans have three brains,” the psychologist tells the police officers when we gather in the lecture hall again. The first acts by reflex, the second according to emotions, and the third, the neo-cortex, is related to conscious and rational decisions making and common sense. The action of police officers must be governed by the neo-cortex. “Do you want to be frogs or men? Do you want to be frogs or princes?” She asks rhetorically. If the police treat people correctly, they will be able to avoid unnecessary discussions, easing their job. One of the men at the back of the room is nodding his head but not in agreement—he is about to fall asleep. The psychologist wakes him with a soft and tender joke, as a mother carefully waking a child: “Are you sitting there praying for me?” The officer blushes and straightens up in his chair. Then she turns toward the rest of the men. “Communication is an incredibly powerful tool. Those who dominate the techniques of communication have power: Communication is power!” If the police officers are able to understand the needs and feelings of others they will also be able to control and manipulate them. One of the strategies of communication that they could use is to express their own vulnerability as a way to resolve conflicts. That helps them “humanize the uniform.” Expressing frustration with a situation elicits sympathy from the residents. “You must conquer allies. If the community is your partner, you have a chance at winning [the] battle.” Above all, the police must avoid fighting with residents. “I don’t want you entering [heated] arguments with residents from the communities. There are people filming everything these days.” True pacification is more than territorial control and occupation and involves building good relations with the local community. The police must leave the process of occupation behind and start engaging with the neighbors. That’s the way to “paint the favela blue” she says, referencing the emblematic color of the police. But there are of course limits to what she’s teaching them: “I’m not talking about vagabundos (thugs). We’re talking about residents!”Footnote 4

“What can be harder than talking about human rights to the Soldiers from Alemão?” The police officer at the front of the room smiles nervously. A few of the men laugh at his feeble attempt to lighten the mood with a joke. Do they find it funny or are they being polite? The lecturer measures each word. He says something about how important it is for the police to “demystify” the human rights, and that he wants the officers to understand the historical context in which the concept emerged. “In the Middle-Ages, society was regulated by strict moral rules,” he begins. “People were afraid of insulting God. But the fear of God has decreased. Today, we must protect society because the moral laws are no longer effective—and there are also international laws that control the power of states.” Human rights, he says, appeared in 1948 with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Religious persons carry this codex with them already: They are foundational, natural rights that every person have. But who is relying on the human rights today, the officer asks rhetorically. “The political left,” he says. Like the Socialist Party and Marcelo Freixo—the archnemesis of the police officers. But human rights were not born as left-wing discourse. On the contrary, they emerged as a reaction to communism and the Soviet Union (“who didn’t sign the treaty,” he adds): The countries that the Socialist Party supports! It’s important that the officers understand that the problem is that now everything has become a matter of human rights: “The question of abortion, the right to do all kinds of besteiras (bullshit)!” The police officers should know that human rights are not what the left-wing claims. Their interpretation of human rights is that the police are not allowed to do this and that, the officer says, before concluding: “We have to create our own discourse of human rights!”

The men in the room have long lost interest in what the officer is saying. They are chatting and making jokes and show no intent to redefine human rights. A few police officers at the back of the room are sleeping, one of them even snores. The officer in charge seems nervous. He tries to catch the attention of his audience with an example: The tactical training they’ve just received is also about human rights! The state can’t hand out guns to people who haven’t been trained in the use of weapons. Human rights means that the police must receive more training so that they don’t kill innocent people or harm their colleagues. He has derailed and tries to get the lecture back on track. “Human rights,” he says, now with a shrill voice, “have been politicized by the left-wing to win votes. They have forced upon us their own interpretations and taken control over human rights! Yes,” he adds, “even our own—even among the Military Police there are Colonels who have been polluted by this discourse!” Yet another bold rhetorical move to gain the police officer’s attention: “Since we have been polluted by the ideological discourse of the left, we believe that the police officer who defends human rights is the one who teaches music to kids—and it isn’t. It’s the operational police officer who guarantees human rights.” One of the men in the room protests, his voice is loud and angry: “Why don’t human rights count when police officers are killed?” The other officers agree: “The police are not treated as human beings!”

Winning Allies

Christine Lagarde is in Complexo do Alemão. She is accompanied by the Brazilian Minister of Development. They take the gondola from Bonsucesso to Alemão, which seems like quite a big risk considering that while they are in the cart they are sitting ducks. But targeting the Director of the IMF and a Brazilian minister would bring mayhem upon the culprits. Lagarde wants to learn more about the Bolsa familia-program, she says to the reporters covering her visit. With their cameras pointed at her, she listens attentively to the testimonies from recipients living in Alemão. Lagarde praises the program and congratulates Dilma’s government with the budget cuts they’ve made this year: “Budgetary discipline is necessary to finance programs like this,” she says. “They go together, hand in hand. In the end, the people who suffer the most from the lack of budgetary discipline are usually the poor.”

I read an interview with Colonel Robson, the Chief of Staff who authorized my fieldwork. He claims that there are two different cultures in the Military Police that are in permanent conflict, trying to destroy one another. One culture is built around the idea that the police are at war, while the other is built around attempts to apply the notion of a citizen police. “When I entered the Military Police and did the [training] course, we were rarely encouraged to dialogue. There was very little interaction,” he says. The “other” was always diffuse: A pole or a doll—some sort of punching bag. He emphasizes the importance of stimulating dialogue between police and citizens. Officers must be encouraged to listen more to the population: “BOPE was an exaggerated and unnecessary reference,” the Colonel says. He argues that the police are mistaken if they think that the war-logic is the only way to do police work. “Often, the officers reproduce representations [of policing] that are already prevalent in society. When the officer is out on the street, he sees that [war practices] are supported by a large part of society. Everything that we teach in classes is abandoned in practice.” He adds: “Everybody wants to be BOPE. Everybody should want to be the UPP.”Footnote 5

Colonel Robson has previously stated that the UPP project is also a pacification of the police. When I meet him again in his offices in central Rio, towards the end of my fieldwork, I ask him what he meant by that. “The practice of proximity [policing] is an opportunity to deconstruct [symbolic representations]. [It’s] an opportunity we have to practice and respect human rights in a mutual way.” He is referring to the relation of distrust between police and young favela residents. “[Proximity policing] is about doing what the police must do in a democratic society in an intelligent way, by creating an environment conducive to efficient police action. It’s about gaining legitimacy, and that will not be achieved with violence—although the peculiarities of Rio de Janeiro create opportunities for the use of violence; although the police have been instrumentalized by a political [and economic] elite during all its existence—and we have fallen like ducklings into that trap.”

Robson led the UPPs during the first years of their implementation and says that, after his retirement, the project went in a direction that he does not support. In 2014, following a corruption scandal in the Military Police that involved several Colonels, the State Secretary of Security requested a group of reform-oriented leaders to take charge and get the local police reform and UPPs on the right track. Colonel Robson assumed as part of the new leadership at the beginning of 2015, right before I reached out to his office. Compared to Colonel Íbis Pereira’s ethical and philosophical reflections at the Legislative Assembly (see Chapter 6: Violent Becomings), Robson talks like a pragmatic: “There has to be a moment when the police must rethink itself. It must become aware of its own role within this scenario.” He’s referring to the armed violence in Rio. “[The pacification of the police is] first a pacification in practice. We have verified that with statistics [showing] reduced police lethality. The previous model was based on invasions, so it was a strained model, of confrontations. It produced police lethality when suspects opposed arrest, it produced death, and it also produced the death of police officers.” He explains that with the pacification, they have shown that there are alternatives to this model that are less harsh, less harmful. He says that the UPPs are like a laboratory that allows them to observe good practices (see also Muñiz and Albernaz 2015: 14f).Footnote 6 The lessons learned from the UPPs could be used to change the entire institution and transform the police.

But the Colonel says that it’s hard to create a citizen police. The representation of policing as warfare is deeply rooted in society: “It is consolidated and confirmed every day.” First, through the media-focus on action-filled events rather than preventative policing. “People are hungry—it’s incredible—our population is hungry, despite all the suffering, it’s hungry for those events.” In particular among the youth, he says. Their hunt for excitement feeds the spiral of violence. “This happens everywhere, right? The police officer is young, he enters [the force] with that [almost universal representation] constructed in movies about the police. […] The [idealization of the] warrior isn’t specific [to Rio], it’s a part of the collective imaginary of what it means to be a police officer across the world.” Most places, reality can’t match the expectation—police work isn’t as action-filled as it looks on TV. But Rio provides plenty of opportunities to act out these imaginaries, Robson says: “No matter how good our curriculum is, no matter how in tune we are with the democratic rule of law, with the philosophy of human rights, the practices of policing, the culture of the police, ends up producing other representations.”

I get into the patrol car with the policemen from the UPP at Mangueira. It’s been a couple of weeks since the last time I was here, after the police’s attempt to “reconquer” the favela (see Chapter 1: Introduction). That time it felt like being in a war movie. I have never seen so many armed police officers in action at the same time. Today I’m here at the commander’s request. He told me that he wanted me to see this. In response to the unrest of past months he has established three teams that will focus on strenghtening dialogue with the local community. I’m a little hesitant. I’ve joined the proximity policing teams of Mangueira before and feel that I have a fair understanding of what they’re about. They spend a few hours inspecting and solving various problems that require the involvement of other public agencies. Sometimes it might be a clogged sewer or a broken water pipe, other times they might carry out community outreach activities, offering free dental care for neighbors, after-school activities for the kids, or gymnastics for the elderly. They document their work with a few pictures that can be uploaded on Facebook or published on the website of the UPPs and write a short report that is filed alongside other “social projects.” Mimicking practices of patronage typical of the wielding of political power in the favelas, they sometimes hand out groceries or candy for the neighborhood kids.

“This is something else,” the commander says, while one of the officers from the teams suggests that their work “goes beyond” former efforts. Each new proximity team consist of three officers. Their task is to “build trust.” I’m introduced to a team that will take me to a quiet part of the favela and show me how they do this in practice. The people who live there are “good people” (gente de bem), workers (trabalhadores). Maybe that’s why I haven’t been there before, as I’ve mostly joined the Tactical Patrol Units in Mangueira. None of the officers are wearing the standard, dark uniforms of their colleagues. Instead, they sport white T-shirts with details in different bright colors. “White symbolizes peace,” the Sergeant in charge explains. The standard uniform is seen as more aggressive. Although they have only been in the team for a week, he says that the experience has changed him and his idea of what policework can be. He used to “like war” (gostar da guerra) but now he’s fully devoted to proximity policing (Fig. 7.2).

Fig. 7.2
A photograph of the proximity team inspecting the areas of a future playground.

The proximity team inspecting the areas of a future playground, July 2015

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The President of one of Mangueira’s Resident Associations and one of his partners are waiting for us when we arrive. We leave the patrol vehicle parked in the street and greet them with a handshake. The Sergeant is in a good mood: “This is our colleague from Norway. He’s here to document our work.” The way he says it makes us sound important. The President and Sergeant lead the way through the favela. One of the officers, a young woman, takes a picture of the group with her phone and posts it on social media. I also pull out my camera to “document” our excursion. We arrive at an open square in the middle of the community where some kids are running around with their kites. By the looks of it, the square is used as a landfill and parking lot, but from the conversation between the officers and two resident representatives, I understand that they plan to move the cars, clean the landfill, and build a playground here. While the officers discuss how the playground should look like, a middle-aged woman approaches us. She says that the property belongs to her mother who is sick with Alzheimer. Now she co-administers the land with her six siblings, she explains and starts sermoning us about her family: One of her brothers has disappeared and nobody knows where he is, and another brother is a monster, because he doesn’t take care of his mother and in her opinion, if you have a family, either a sibling, child, or parent—and you don’t take care of them when they are sick, then you are a piece of S! She asks us to pardon her—she doesn’t want to use bad language—but you’re a piece of shit, and there she said it anyways but we must forgive her, because that kind of person is nothing less than a monster. She talks fast and incessantly, like she’s ill. But the Sergeant is determined to see his plan through. He politely explains that he and the other officers are from the proximity team at the UPP and that they are here to attend to the needs of the community and help them “make improvements.” He tells the women that the clearing will be of much better use if it is cleaned of the rubble and the cars are parked along the fringes of the lot, so that the neighborhood kids can play here. After a short conversation the woman eventually agrees that indeed, the area will be of much better use as a playground, and we head back to the Resident Association.

When we get there, a group of neighbors have gathered outside the building. A woman is sitting on a plastic chair in the middle of the street. The woman’s body—her throat and arms—is covered by scar tissue. It looks like she has been severly burned. Her son is hanging onto her neck. He is mentally disabled and his face lights up when he sees the police arrive. The Sergeant says that he helped the woman take her son to the doctor last week. He greets them with enthusiasm. Later, as we are heading back to the police station, the Sergeant explains that the key is to make the President of the Resident Association depend on the police and not the other way around.Footnote 7 He is very pleased with the visit. “Did you see that?” He sounds exited. “Did you see, Tomas? That’s how things ought to be done! I’ve already told them that I’ll organize a forró (musical genre from the northeast) street-party, and I swear I will! That’s how you win allies!” We have hardly been here for more than an hour and the group has decided to call it a day. In the car, on our way back to the base, the Sergeant tells me that what matters is not the time they spend out on the streets, but the quality of the interaction with the people they meet.

It’s gotten dark, the Cup final between Botafogo and Vasco has just ended, and Vasco has been crowned champion. I’m back at Mangueira, which is right next to Maracanã, Rio’s main stadium where the final was held. The officers in the Tactical Patrol Unit that I’m with seem bothered by my presence. They ask me when I’ll leave and eventually, they tell me that they’ll drive me back to the UPP. As we walk down towards the road that runs along the narrow valley dividing Mangueira from the neighbouring favela of Tuitui the police officers make sure to keep me out of the line of fire from the alley above us. They seem tense. I think they see me as a liability. As I get into the patrol vehicle with two of the officers—a Sergeant and a Soldier—a second vehicle drives down our street, at full speed and with lights blazing and sirens howling. The car stops next to us, and the officers tell us that they have received reports of a bus incident nearby.

We drive down the road for what seems like just a few seconds, when suddenly, we come across a chaotic scene. A bus has stopped in the middle of the road, smoke rolling out of the windows. There’s commotion on the street, and a group of 20 or 30 persons are yelling at someone—but it’s hard to tell who. The police officers from the second patrol vehicle force two young men to the ground. Both are wiggling and shouting, trying to break free, and the officers deliver a few well-placed kicks to keep them quiet. The bus is still full of people. They are yelling something about a baby. Soon, however, the bus leaves—I assume the driver wants to get away from the disturbance. We follow suit and catch up with it a few blocks ahead. It has stopped in the middle of an intersection, and a crowd has gathered around it. There are a few other police vehicles there but in the chaos it’s difficult to tell the police and crowd apart. We are parked and have just left the vehicle when a man storms past us. The moment he starts to run, the crowd goes crazy. Yelling, screaming, pulling at the guy’s t-shirt, handing out beatings—it all happens so fast and the scene is so confusing that at one point I’m not sure if the man who tried to escape is a police officer or a thug. The Sergeant opens the trunk of the patrol vehicle, grabbing a couple of shock grenades in case he needs to disperse the mob. Later, he explains that in these situations you must move fast: If the police officers don’t intervene, they can easily end up lynching the thug.

Eventually, the runner is cuffed and placed in the other vehicle. I can see that he’s bleeding from a wound on his forehead. We follow suit. I share the back seat with a young couple who tell me that they had been on their way home when suddenly, four assailants had entered, setting off fireworks inside the bus full of passengers. The driver had abandoned ship, leaving them trapped inside. The woman is still shaking. She tells me that she’s pregnant, and that the situation had terrified her. The Sergeant asks her boyfriend if he’d be able to identify the guy that the police just apprehended. He would. “Now you say the same thing when we ask you to identify him at the station! Your woman had a bad time. He’s not going to see you, so you have to identify him!” The Sergeant insists. He knows that the couple could easily get cold feet since they both live in Mangueira. After we have dropped them off at the Civil Police station the Sergeant tells me that one of the patrol vehicles had seen the bus drive by and heard shooting inside. The whole event had been very confusing. The officers don’t even know if there were two buses or just one. According to the Sergeant, they apprehended two guys and a gun. One of the guys had insisted that the 365 belonged to the other suspect. “Now how did he know the calibre of the gun?” he asks rhetorically.

Eliminating the Enemy

“What are you doing? Get out of there guys!” The Sergeant is waving at us to get out of the road that passes in front of the UPP where I’m talking with a couple of officers. Here, in the line of fire between the favela and the police station we are easy targets. It’s been a couple of days since the recycling with the Special Forces ended. I’m back in Alemão to do a final round of interviews before leaving Brazil. But first I want to catch up with the Sergeant supervising today’s shift. He is an effusive guy, has a reputation of being “crazy” and loves to joke about my research. Today he asks me when I’ll join in on the action: “Why don’t you give him a machine gun as well,” he tells the officer at the armory as I grab a bulletproof vest. Then he gets serious: “You’re in the most dangerous place of all of Brazil,” he says. “Everybody fears Alemão, even BOPE [officers] are scared when they come here.” It would have been better if I could take the officers with me to Norway, he suggests and laughs. “I’d be happy to work without a gun on my hip. Imagine the officers from Alemão on patrol in Norway! Imagine Daví there! He wouldn’t last a day out of jail!” His Soldiers can’t work any other place, he says. “They’ve gotten used to combat situations; they aren’t prepared for regular police work.” They would all get arrested, the Sergeant jokes, well aware that what they do is not in line with the principles of modern democracies nor the rule of law.Footnote 8

He brags about his love for war. He’s the second-last officer to have killed a ganso (lit. goose; thug) in Alemão. “The problem is that every time we kill someone, instead of getting a pat on the back we get harassed by the judges!” The Sergeant tells me about the time he arrested a minor and the judge wanted to prosecute him instead. “But we were prepared,” he says. “We had thought of an answer to all the judge’s questions!” He has tons of these stories he says, as he pulls out his phone from his pocket. “Look at this!” He opens the image gallery and shows me an album with media images of police officers. He appears in many of them, machine gun raised while he makes his way through the favela. The Sergeant proudly tells me that he’s one of the most operational officers at the base. He shows me another picture, this one has definitely not been published by the press. “This was my lucky day!” He laughs and makes a funny gesture at the image which shows him inside a patrol vehicle, grinning and with wads of cash on his lap—the kind you see in movie heists. He puts his phone away and gets somber. “Honestly, the pacification doesn’t exist. The only real thing is the occupation. It’s very easy to trick people with no education. What we’re doing here isn’t pacification, it’s execution.”Footnote 9

Far from what was insinuated by the Sergeant, it was not the “poorly educated” who confused execution with pacification—rather, the rhetoric of pacification had a relatively well-educated, international public in mind, and was often referred to as para ingles ver (lit. “for the Englishmen to see”) by favela residents (see Sørbøe 2013). Among those living under the occupation and tutelage of the pacifying police forces there was little doubt about the role of the police as exterminators. Thus, support for the police among favela residents was often (not always) also an expression of support for the police’s extermination practices and an authoritarian world view.

In the desk at the common room in Alemão someone has left the latest edition of EXTRA. Newspapers are a rare sight at the station, so I assume that this edition must have captured their attention. The entire front page is black. At the top of the page there is an illustration from the sixteenth or seventeenth century. It shows a slave being whipped in public. Below, a recent picture of the maimed body of a man who was tied to a streetlight and lynched after robbing a bar. The paper argues that Brazil is returning to the generalized barbarism of slavery: People are thirsty for revenge rather than justice.

I interview Felipe in the meeting room at the base which, for all practical purposes, is now my office. In the middle of the conversation, Celso rushes into the room. He starts rummaging through a locker and barks an order at Felipe. We stop the recording and follow him out to the hall. Fifteen minutes earlier it was lively and full of officers. Now it’s almost empty. I ask Felipe what happened. “The police killed a goose.” He chuckles. A teenage boy opened fire against one of the Tactical Patrol Units. The officers retaliated and managed to kill him. Felipe gets an old, flowery tablecloth from the kitchenette. The officers need something to carry the body out of the favela in. Every moment spent waiting in the alley increases the risk of a retaliation. Felipe packs the tablecloth into Celso’s backpack and they get ready to assist the patrol unit. As he leaves the base, Celso turns to me, grins, and says: “Last week’s training is already producing results!”

The atmosphere at the base remains eerie, tense. The officers warn me that there might be a revenge attack on the UPP. We are told to put our bulletproof vests on. Felipe explains that since the boy must be declared dead by a doctor the officers must take his body to the nearest hospital.Footnote 10 “How do they do that?” I ask, although I already know the answer: “In the trunk of the patrol vehicle.” Soon, the officers who killed the trafficker arrive triumphantly at the base. We flock around the unit to hear them recount the event: They had taken three traffickers by surprise in one of the alleys just below the UPP. One had fired at the police who retaliated, managing to kill the shooter while the other kids escaped. “We had nothing to carry the body in,” one of them says between giggles. They had asked one of the neighbors for a bedsheet: “Citizen! Would you bring me a bed sheet? Oh, do you want this one or this?” The police officer mimics the person who had brought them the sheets, pretending that he is holding a sheet in each hand. “Fuck, it’s for carrying a body!” He cracks up. They had to haul the body through the favela, tugging at the bed sheet with one hand while they pointed their machine guns at the rooftop terraces with the other. He show us how they had moved down the alleys. “It was just like being in Afghanistan!”

The officers brought the trafficker’s gun back to the base. They pass it around, letting us inspect the trophy. They assume that the boy they killed must be Paulista, from São Paulo, since this type of gun is usually employed by the PCC (Primeiro Commando da Capital), the criminal organization controlling São Paulo’s favelas. Suddenly I’m handed the gun, the evidence, I think to myself and quickly pass it on. One of the men empties the chamber to see how many bullets are left. He counts six: “He couldn’t have done too much with this!” “Did you take a picture of the guy?” one of them asks. “Sandro was there, nagging about how we couldn’t take pictures because the guy was underage,” his colleague complains. “How did he know he was underage?” The Sergeant I spoke to earlier enters the room and interrupts the conversation: “That underage-stuff is bullshit. When they shoot the bullets are all the same, whether the shooter is an adult or a child.” The officers nod at their supervisor’s comment. “That area is always heavy. There are always traffickers there. I bet that if we stop patrolling the area they’ll be back in a few hours,” another officer remarks. He says that the area is close to Beco do Flipper, where their colleague, Vito, was shot a few weeks ago (see Chapter 6: Violent Becomings). “What if you got the guy who killed Vito!” he exclaims. “I don’t know if that would be compensation,” one of them answers. An eye for an eye is not vengeance. “What do you think the commander will say?” The officers start speculating. “He never appreciates our work. He’ll only ask why we didn’t kill the rest of them. He’s impossible to please.” One of the men nudges me from the side, nods at the Sergeant and says in a hushed voice, so that the Sergeant won’t hear him: “He’s a fantastic Sergeant. He has killed fifty-five thugs!” The other officers laugh, and I ask them if it’s a joke. “You bet it isn’t! Once, he killed two criminals while we were patrolling together!” (Fig. 7.3)

Fig. 7.3
A photograph of the gun of a teenage boy killed by officers on patrol.

The gun of a teenage boy killed by officers on patrol, June 2015

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War and Sex

In the following days, the event is reported in the news. Neighbors have reacted to how the body was carried out of the alley in a piece of cloth. They also claim that the police had taken selfies next to the body. The papers publish a blurry picture of one of the officers with an arm raised in the air in front of him as proof. At the station, they’re annoyed by the media reporting. Instead of being praised they’re met with criticism. The Sub-commander explains that the media always twist everything to put the police in a bad light. He says that the officer in the picture was just trying to get a signal on his phone.

A few days later, the Sub-commander invites me to a barbeque in Penha, a residential neighborhood just north of Alemão and Serra da Misericordia. They are celebrating the four-year anniversary of UPP Chatuba with a party at an outdoor gymnastics hall. Large grills brimming with meat and chicken line one of the walls next to tables set with bowls of potato salad, soda bottles, beer, and cake. A DJ is playing pop music at a deafening volume. Several of the commanding officers at the UPPs and Military Police headquarters are attending. I see many familiar faces—Colonels, Majors, and Captains that I’ve interviewed over the course of the last months—but find a place to sit next to a group of Soldiers from Alemão. It’s the patrol unit that killed the drug trafficker last week. The officer who shot the teenager is proud. They explain how big this was for them: These things don’t happen that often. A bit confused, I ask if killing traffickers isn’t quite common in Alemão. “Yes, it is, but not like this.” I get the impression that they perceive it as a kind of rite of passage: As the moment they become real police officers. Real men. This killing had all the elements of what the officers considered an honorable killing, rather than just a “regular” execution: They had used their wit and cunning to surprise the traffickers; they showed courage, highlighted by how they retaliated after being shot at; and finally, they succeeded in eliminating the enemy, dragging the body out of the favela, just like in Afghanistan. Now they were real warriors. As if to underline how strongly killing is associated with manhood, one of them jokes that the jubilant celebration I witnessed at the station had continued in bed once they got home to their wives.Footnote 11

What does war do to us? How does war resignify meanings? How does it change our understanding of what’s right and wrong, blurring the border between the brutal and the thrilling? In a book about police violence in Brazil Íbis Pereira (one of the reform-oriented Colonels at the Military Police) cites the French philosopher Frédéric Gros:

Belonging to a band of armed men is constituting. Being under the constant possibility of armed conflict presents itself as a mode of being. The everyday realities of war transforms the human soul to stone, produces a kind of suffering capable of altering the framework of reference that banalizes the sense of morality, because it modifies the relation with death and, at the extreme, leads to excess and crime. In those circumstances, when it is possible to make [someone] suffer without condemnation, brutality imposes itself as an axiom. Here we have the manifestation of a terrible power: That of reifying both the victim and the butcher. (Frederic Gros in Pereira 2015: 42. Translated from the Portuguese)

A controversial news-story from 2010 comes to mind. It was a report on the Norwegian soldiers participating in the war in Afghanistan. The title was printed in bold and read WAR IS BETTER THAN SEX. Below, there was a picture of a Norwegian soldier looking through his gunsight. The soldiers in Afghanistan were quoted: “Being in combat is worth the three months without getting laid. It might sound stupid, but it’s better than fucking. When you’re on the battlefield, it’s you or the enemy, and when you get ‘red mist’ in your sight… (indicating a mortal hit) It’s indescribable. That’s why we’re here” (my emphasis).

The report has repercussions. A different newspaper prints an interview with a military psychologist: “Norwegian soldiers aren’t chosen for their lust for war. They are a group of fine young men who are willing to sacrifice their lives and health to change the world. But of course, they aren’t beyond influence. War does something to people. It always has.” The journalist objects: “But we like to think that Norwegian soldiers are more decent?” “The common denominator is that they’re all human beings. When we are subjected to hatred, grotesque acts, and injustice, we start questioning what’s right and wrong in the world. Soldiers start looking for revenge, and killing more than they need to. But they haven’t been selected for being that way. We have sent out or best ambassadors. Sadly, a development like this is historically the rule rather than the exception.”

Clearly, when war is evoked, the dividing lines between liberal and illiberal state practices become blurry, and the presence of Norwegian soldiers in Afghanistan shows us how liberal democracies legitimize imperialist warfare in the name of (national) security. It also emphasizes the banalization of morality signaled by Gros—what Hannah Arendt (2006 [1963]) describes as a total moral collapse: The perpetrators of Holocaust did not have to silence their consciousness because they thought that they were doing good. After all, they counted on the support of respectable society. The Norwegian soldiers haven’t been selected for their thirst for blood, the military psychologist says. But these are people who signed up for war; they deliberately chose a path that took them to Afghanistan, not due to a lack of alternatives but because they wanted to become soldiers. Police officers also choose—but what remains unclear to me. A secure income? A job that gives them authority? A family tradition? Or action-packed war? To change the world, ridding it of evil? The answer is necessarily complex but Anderson is crystal clear when I ask him what motivates recruits that join the Military Police: “Guns, power, money, and cars.”

Conclusion: The Politics of Violence

Who are we talking about when we talk about “the police?” Are we talking about the police officers that moonlight as paramilitaries or the institutional structures that produce, direct, and legitimize violence? About the officers who execute black youth in the favelas “in the hundreds”? Or about those who understand that a modernization of the institution is pressing? Often, analyses of police violence presuppose a coherent institutional identity to which all or mostly all police officers ascribe to. In this book I have highlighted the challenges of such a homogenizing understanding of the police. By focusing on the complexity and many layers of institutional and private interests that intersect in everyday practices of policing I have shown how dichotomies such as private and public—official and unofficial—are often difficult or even impossible to untangle. In this chapter, I have also shown how forms of authority structured around force and care holds tensions and dilemmas that are not easily resolved (see also Chapter 6: Violent becomings).

Attempts at modernizing the police were fraught with these contradictions. On an institutional level, these attempts failed due to personal dynamics and conflicting interests among police leaders and between officers at different levels of the police hierarchy but importantly, due to the prevalence of a militarized institutional culture (see i.g. Soares 2011). This institutional culture rested on understandings of policing as warfare and of the population in the favelas as potential enemies, reproducing the necropolitical patterns of colonial occupation (see Mbembe 2003). Policing practices centred around the logics of elimination and transformation, i.e. of a deterritorialization of the “culture of trafficking” followed by (re)territorializations of an emergent police order, shaped the continued predominance of urban warfare strategies and armed violence at the UPPs. With regards to this last point, Jaqueline Muniz and Elisabete Albernaz (2015) have noted how the routinization of police operations (as opposed to regular street patrol) in pacified favelas lead to an arms race and the subsequent strengthening of a “culture of war” within the institution, producing sentiments of mutual distrust between the police and the communities they patrolled. Thus, rather than encouraging proximity, the pacification project deepened pre-existing divisions, the product of a long history of authoritarian politics in Brazil (Salem 2016a, 2016b).

However, even if attempts to modernize the institution (bringing the police’s practices in line with a liberal order centered around a rhetoric of human rights and citizen policing) had been successful, the tactical training of police officers I have just described shows how institutional attempts to control the police through protocols and guidelines for action where also centered around urban warfare tactics and techniques that sought to reduce the “collateral damage” of police violence, evoking ideas of surgical war or armed peace (see Saborio 2013). Within the institution, the continued emphasis on policing as warfare was perceived as an inevitable response to the violence of drug traffickers. In the context of divergent understandings of policing within the institution, patrol officers received mixed messages from their superiors. On the one hand, they were told not to be cowards but combatants, on the other, that they should not be heroes but act as professionals, within the framework of the law. Despite the recognition among reform-oriented leaders that the logic of confrontation needed to be abandoned, political leaders, state officials, and officers across the institutional hierarchy insisted on the need to suppress armed traffickers first. From this point of view, the goal of training was to apply violence in a “rational” manner, i.e. to apply a bureaucratic logic to the use of force. In other words, to assert the state’s monopoly on violence within its institutions; to capture, direct, and control the “private interests” or war machine dynamics that characterizes policing in Rio.Footnote 12

The human rights lesson that the officers attended shows how attempts to modernize the police and adopt a liberal albeit militarized framework of policing was subverted even by those who were supposed to put it into practice. The officer who held the lesson had been given a difficult task. In Brazil the fight for human rights has generally been voiced by minoritarian groups and monopolized by the political left (see Eilbaum and Medeiros 2015). Among police officers, this meant that the appeal to human rights was usually interpreted as a defense of criminals and as part of the cultural war of the “communist” left—a sentiment that is broadly shared by the Brazilian public (see Caldeira 1991). In a worldview where people were either friends or enemies, the defense of human rights was seen as an attack on police authority by criminals, their alleged supporters, and people ascribing to a communist ideology, seen as being at the root of evil.

Thus, the emphasis on how the Human Rights Declaration had been a reaction to totalitarianism like that of the Soviet Union was an attempt to show officers that it is not “originally” a leftist discourse. For the liberal reader, it might be easy to disregard the instructor’s idea of creating a “police discourse” on human rights as nonsensical but his suggestion brings the cosmological dimensions of the tension within the police to the fore, and highlight how notions of cultural warfare (in addition to colonial warfare) shaped policing at the UPPs. If we follow calls to take the illiberal other seriously, we might even argue that the officer was levering a critique that has also been raised by anthropologists (see Asad 2000; Fassin 2011): That appeals to human rights have often been used to promote particular political agendas through the universalization of western liberal values.

Thus, the officers’ rejection of human rights as a valid paradigm that they should relate to highlights a worldview held by many officers that places them outside of and in opposition to a liberal framework structured around the modern, rights-bearing individual (see Martinez-Moreno 2023). Their adherence to a different normative order is brought to the fore in the affirmation that the police must protect a morally degraded society that has lost its fear of God, signaling how the cosmological order that the police ascribe to places emphasis on divine authority and the military (characterized by their moral superiority) as stewards of the Nation’s moral order (see Larkins and Durão 2022). Analyzed on these terms, the resistance towards human rights among the officers acquires meaning as the expression of an opposition between universalism and regionalism; between humanism and religion that characterizes the emergence of authoritarian formations elsewhere (see Pasieka 2017). It expresses the tension and negotiation between different cosmological orders in the institutional attempts to modernize the Military Police.

Colonel Robson explained the institutional challenges partly as the result of cultural representations of policing as warfare.Footnote 13 Similar to Kristin Kobes du Mez’ (2023) understanding of militant masculinity and Ben Cowan’s (2016) analysis of the gendered and sexual dimensions of military manhood, he claimed that while these representations are part of a global, gendered phenomenon, they are especially prone to the dynamics of urban violence in Rio de Janeiro. The gendered connotations of warfare and killing that I examined in Chapter 5: Police masculinities, is also brought to the fore in this chapter, where I have stressed how manhood and killing were often equated. This link between warfare, manhood, and sexual prowess is also prevalent in studies on protofascism (e.g., Reich 2013 [1933]; Theweleit 1989). Among patrol officers at the UPPs, killing criminals was perceived not only as the real task of the police but also as the epitome of manhood (Salem and Larkins 2021). Particularly killing in battle was cast as a heroic achievement, in which police put their lives at risk for the greater good. This, more so than the straightforward executions that characterize most police killings, was a way for the officer to powerfully enact himself as a real police officer and a real man.

However, the political instrumentalization of the police is not lost on me nor on Colonel Robson: Reducing police violence to a “cultural problem” caused by adrenaline-seeking young men that must be kept in check is too simplistic. On the one hand, it can be seen as patronizing—at least by police officers and the people who support their practices. On the other, it downplays the responsibility of political leaders and institutional structures (i.g. a judicial system lenient towards police killings; a public security policy organized around the logics of confrontation; the institutional legacy of slavery and militarism) that serve to uphold police violence and practices of extermination, and the broad social acceptance for violence as an appropriate response to crime, as practices of lynching indicate. This popular demand for vengeance and extermination as a response to crime is often emphasized by intellectuals who note the broad adherence to the saying bandido bom e bandido morto: a good thug is a dead thug.Footnote 14 Put simply, the racialized and political violence of Brazilian police forces cannot be reduced to the expression of violent masculinity within the institution—the desire to exercise power through violence among the rank and file of the police—even when we acknowledge that a violent masculine ethos and patriarchal culture are important elements to the dynamics of police violence. Rather, it should be seen as shaped by popular demands for a hard-handed policing approach, political opportunism, institutional structures that create a virtual impunity for police officers, and large-scale dynamics of necropolitical governance and economic predation—an ongoing process of colonization—a point I will return to in the next chapter.

In the ethnography I have presented this far, I have shown that the production of police officers as warriors is part of an institutional logic that must be contextualized within a wider political framework of governance of poverty, structured around a punitive and militarized response to urban crime (see also Graham 2011; Wacquant 2008). I have also shown, in this and former chapters, that one of the effects that the logic of war produces is a strategy of policing where the “solution” to urban violence is the elimination of the enemy. When policing is articulated through the logics of conquest and territorial control, failure to confront is seen as a retreat, or worse, as a dangerous concession to the enemy. The problem, in the mind of the police warrior, is not the inefficiency of militarized policing in addressing crime but the limits imposed on anything but total war: To solve the problem of crime, the police must go further; kill more; and defeat their enemies.