Drawing on a Sao Paulo-based story from his latest book, Graham Denyer Willis explores the thin lines that separate the categories of ‘police’ and ‘criminals’, and how these boundaries are distorted, crossed and negotiated in everyday life in Latin American cities

Pereira, Isabella Nunes

LSE Research Online

Communicating bottom-up social developmentAs criminal as criminals?Drawing on a Sao Paulo-based story from his latest book, GrahamDenyer Willis explores the thin lines that separate the categories of‘police’ and ‘criminals’, and how these boundaries are distorted, crossedand negotiated in everyday life in Latin American cities.‘Police are as criminal as criminals’ is a common sentiment in LatinAmerican cities. It is not a passing sentiment, either. Throughout theregion, the distinction between police and criminals is blurred and grey,believed fungible and always uncertain. Many police commit crimes andmany criminals police, or so it goes.In everyday life and for much theory, this blurring is deeplyconsequential. And yet, to many outside observers, this distinction isobvious. Police are the state. They are uniformed, governed by laws andaccountable to the public, even as they hold a special mandate to beviolent. They are the emissaries of formality. Criminals, on the otherhand, are those who destabilize, cause unpredictability and sow disorder.They are deviant and problematic. They are emissaries of the informal. Inthis reasoning, the dissonance between these two worlds is clear. Theyare separate, distinct, unconnected.One of these understandings is rooted in everyday life in Latin Americancities. The other comes from an idea of the state extracted from life in theGlobal North –a place with an overlooked and largely assumed history ofviolence and problematic police.If many people in Latin America cannot easily distinguish between aHome About Book Blog posts Links Resources This site is supportedbyThe Favelas at LSEproject has come to anend, and we will nolonger be publishingnew posts on this site.However, you can stillexplore our blog posts,download a free copy ofour book UndergroundSociabilities, andexplore our toolkit.If you want to seehow socialpsychologists workon socialdevelopment, visitCredit: Fotos GOVBA (CC BY 2.0)police officer and a criminal, it is not because of a uniform or mandate,but, rather, because of confusion of identities, and an inability to trusteither.But how does a police officer know the difference? Consider a story:Rafael came into thehomicide department onaccount of a resistênciaseguida de morte –a‘resisting arrest followedby death’- that hadhappened earlier thatnight. It was late and hehad been closing up hissister’s store –a verymodest shop in a verymodest communitywhere they sold candyand other sweets at acottage scale.  Theretractable metal doorwas partly pulled downand Rafael was tallyingthe money earned fromthe day. It was night and,being off duty, he was in plainclothes.  Gun in hand, a young man burst inthrough the door. Confusion ensued and Rafael was at a loss to explainwhat came next. In the aftermath, the young man lay dead on theground, shot nine times.Rafael lived down the street, in what the head homicide detectivedescribed as “one of the worst parts of São Paulo.” This community,which I call Villa Andre, was “horrible”, he said, almost certainly amongthe most awful places to live in Greater São Paulo.  And yet, thiscommunity was also less than a couple of kilometers away from some ofthe most expensive gated communities in all of Brazil –where personalhelicopter traffic buzzes from morning and night. I asked Rafael if therewere other police that lived in this neighborhood. “Many”, he said, “I wasborn there, and so I see it differently than most people see it.” Poor itwas, he implied, but it was still the place where he grew up, had family,Dear friends, our project has now come to an end, but resources on our blog and toolkit will remain available. Thanks.blogs.lse.ac.uk/toolkitsocialdFavelas at LSE @FavelasatLSEExpandStudying #development and #arts ? Don't miss this free toolkit from @FavelasatLSE blogs.lse.ac.uk/toolkitsociald pic.twitter.com/zopUlkXQzfRetweeted by Favelas atLSELSE @LSEnewsExpand23 Jul22 JulTweets FollowTweet to @FavelasatLSEfriends and, now that he was a police officer, police colleagues. Was itunsafe? Yes. He put it in a rather self-incriminating binary:  “There arebasically two choices for police that live in Villa Andre. Become a criminalor leave the community -except it is too hard to get out, and so you makedo. All the police that live in the community grew up there. None movedthere after the fact”.Later in conversation with the head homicide detective, he explained thatin Rafael’s shooting of the man, he saw someone ‘making do’. Rafael wasa young police officer. This was his first resistência. He was nervous andso he just kept on shooting, even after the man was on the ground. Wasthis an abuso (an abuse of force)? Maybe.The detective told me about a recent case of a police officer being killedafter a home invasion. He had been shot just because the suspect hadseen his police uniform they said. This kind of thing was bad for police,who end up feeling scared and sometimes reacting rashly to violence. Hesegwayed the discussion to another case he had worked like Rafael’s. There was some doubt about whether in a particular resistência, theofficer had gone too far in killing an assailant. As he debated with otherdetectives whether the police officer should have done what he did, thephone rang. It was a notification of another case, just like the other one,but where the police officer was dead and the assailant long gone.The detective continued on with his interpretation of Rafael’s case: Hewas worried about the number of shots. Nine was a lot to come from onepolice officer. It was a bit excessive. But he seemed to trust Rafael. “Hewas nervous,” he told me. Shooting someone is a big deal, and it is hardto control yourself –especially when it happens in your own place. “He didgo too far, but he will learn how to defend himself properly”. When all thepaperwork was done, he went to have a word with Rafael about what wasgoing to happen next. “You’re aware the prosecutor is going to notice howmany shots you fired,” said the chief. “You need to practice.” Just tell theprosecutor the truth, that this is your first resistência. You were nervousbecause it was your first time. Next time don’t shoot as many times, andjust aim for the middle.Another group of police filed in to the room, related to anotherresistência. Having heard about Rafael’s case, these other police hadquestions. “Quem matou o bandido? (Who killed the bandido?)” askedone.  Rafael stood up to acknowledge. “It was you? Congratulations, myman!” beamed the incoming officers.For police in Brazil, the categories of bandido and police break down notso much as two groups, but as one defined in opposition to the other. Ifyou are armed and engage in real or perceived criminality, and comefrom a particular racial and spatial background, you are a bandido. If youare a police officer who engages in criminality, you are a bandido. If youdie unceremoniously in a poor part of the city, you are a bandido. In thiskind of context, you have a very strong interest in defining what you arenot.In Latin America, as elsewhere, the categories of police and criminalbleed into each other, both figuratively and literally. But deadly policeviolence pushes back in ugly ways at that blurring. To kill a suspect is todefine him as a bandido and yourself, by definition, as something else. Itobliterates obvious fogginess, attempting to separate where separation isimpossible. For police, this is a bloody and problematic question of lifeand death, but, also, identity. For citizens, it further obscures identities,resolving little. For theory, it makes the difference between formal andthe informal, legal and the illegal, state and non-state, indistinguishableand redundant.Featured image credit: Klaus Balzano (CC BY-ND 2.0)About the AuthorGraham Denyer Willis is a University Lecturer in the Centres ofDevelopment Studies and Latin American Studies, and a Fellow ofQueens’ College, University of Cambridge. His first book, The KillingConsensus: Police, Organized Crime and the Regulation of Life and Deathin Urban Brazil (University of California Press, 2015), is based on threeyears of ethnographic research with homicide and other detectives of theCivil Police in Sao Paulo, Brazil.The views expressed on this post belong solely to the author and shouldnot be taken as the opinion of the Favelas@LSE Blog nor of the LSE. Please read our comments policy before commenting.Share this:Facebook 392 Twitter 25 Email LinkedIn Google    June 8th, 2015 | Brazil, Development policies, English, Featured,Policing | 0 CommentsLeave A Comment Previous postRedditNext post Logged in as Blog editor. Log out »Comment...POST COMMENT Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email.RelatedA different kind ofsecurity: The need forappropriatehealthcare policies inRio de Janeiro’sfavelasA festive surveillance(and its discontents):Mega-events in Riode JaneiroSex workers’mobilisation againstdiscrimination: Anexplicit case for harmreduction methods inBrazilApril 8, 2015In "Brazil"April 22, 2015In "Brazil"September 30, 2014In "Brazil & UK"Copyright © 2014 LSE

As criminal as criminals?

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