The potentials of community policing in the reduction of use-of-force levels by military police forces

• Autor(a) principal: Fernandes, Alan
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista Brasileira de Segurança Pública (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://revista.forumseguranca.org.br/index.php/rbsp/article/view/1269
• topic: Community policing; Use of force; Public security; Police lethality; Public policies; Uso da força; Policiamento comunitário; Segurança pública; Letalidade policial; Políticas públicas

This paper discusses a correlation between community policing and the use of force by military police in Brazil. Oriented-community police strategies have been a formula used worldwide, since the 1970s, and in Brazil, since the early 1980s. A promise of gains in crime prevention, increased confidence in the police work, responsiveness of police managers to society, transparency and shifting repressive models to fight crime toward more preventive and collectively constructed forms. Therefore, it is assumed that its deepening would promote lower levels of use of force by police agencies. However, according by the more than 20 years of the initial experiences in Brazil and the high levels of police lethality, certain limits of this public policy can be seen. Based on the records of events attended by the Military Police of the state of São Paulo, the research has used quantitative models to analyse whether, in the period of greatest impact of the implementation of community policing in that territory (2004), possible reductions in the use of force were made present in the police units (Policing Companies) covered by the project to implement the Japanese model Koban. The results show that community policing can affect the violent practices of the military police depending on other variables implicit in this public policy, that, sometimes, are neglected in favour of formalism and the maintenance of remaining institutional logics.