Policing the Brazilian Poor: Resistance to and Acceptance of Police Brutality in Urban Popular Classes (Salvador, Brazil)

Abstract

This article discusses police brutality from the point of view of those social groups that are most affected by it-poor workers, nonwhites, and in particular the residents of the suburb of Novos Alagados, one of the areas most lacking in urban infrastructure in Salvador, Brazil. Through 31 extensive interviews and direct observation, the authors discuss in great detail the various forms of violence experienced by residents, criminal infractors, and police. In a context of poverty, unemployment, and a critical deterioration of the informal mechanisms of social control, police procedures generate ambivalent reactions, which reflect the difficulty of the local population in taking a critical position to confront abuse. The residents condemn abuses by the police when they themselves are the victims, but they acceptsimilarpractices directed againstcriminal elements, and in this way they legitimize the brutality consequent to the operative model of policing.