`Ensuring our safety, so they say` `Fazendo a

'Ensuring our safety, so they
say'
'Fazendo a segurança da gente,
entre aspas'
Adolescents’ perspectives on the Pacifying Police Unit (UPP) in a
Rio de Janeiro low-income community
Therese Leopoldsson
Department of Child and Youth Studies
Master's Thesis, 30 hp
Child and Youth Studies
Master's Programme in the Best Interest of the Child and Human
rights (120 hp)
Spring 2014
Advisor: Ingrid Olsson
Examiner: Ingrid Engdahl
English title: XXX (Obligatoriskt, skrivs in i ditt examensbevis)
'Ensuring our safety, so they say'
'Fazendo a segurança da gente,
entre aspas'
Adolescents’ perspectives on the Pacifying Police Unit (UPP) in a Rio de
Janeiro low-income community.
Therese Leopoldsson
Abstract
This master's thesis is conducted as a minor field study in a low-income community in Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil, with a pacifying police unit. The aim was to describe how youths in the community experience
their daily lives and what they tell about what is 'feeling safe' and 'feeling unsafe' for them before and
after the installation of the police unit and in relation to the police officers. The thesis is based on
interpretative phenomenological analysis, and the material was gathered through semi-structured
interviews with open-ended questions. Furthermore it strives at having a children's perspective. The
main findings are that terms like 'feeling safe' and 'feeling unsafe' need to be seen in the light of the
context and how people give them meaning. Since the 'pacification', safety for the residents have been
enhanced in many ways but at the same time new situations of insecurity and 'feeling unsafe' have
arisen with the police unit constantly present in the community. The abuse of power by the male police
officers was a big reason for 'feeling unsafe' after the installation of the UPP unit in this specific
community. Conclusions drawn are that the youths in this study feel relieved that the armed conflicts
are gone and that the drug dealers are no longer in control. Thus they feel safer but not safe with the
police unit and they ask for more communication and respect from the police officers.
Keywords
Minor field study; Rio de Janeiro; Unidade de Polícia Pacificadora (UPP); community policing;
security; feeling safe; feeling unsafe; youths; child perspective; interpretative phenomenological
analysis
Table of contents
Preword ........................................................................................................... 1
Introduction ........................................................................................... 2
Background and problem formulation ................................................................... 4
Children's perspective/s ..................................................................................... 5
Aim and research questions.................................................................... 6
Previous research ................................................................................... 6
Children's and adolescents' perspectives on police officers ...................................... 6
The pacifying police units (UPP) in Rio de Janeiro................................................... 8
Theoretical framework............................................................................ 9
Interpretative phenomenological analysis ............................................................. 9
Methodological approach and design .................................................... 11
Selection of community/participants and limitations ..............................................11
Participants ..................................................................................................11
The interview guide ..........................................................................................12
Conducting the interviews .................................................................................12
Analysis ..........................................................................................................13
Issues of language and translation......................................................................13
Ethical considerations .......................................................................................14
The quality of the study.....................................................................................15
Results and discussion.......................................................................... 16
Life in the community .......................................................................................16
Ambiguity........................................................................................................21
Feeling unsafe..................................................................................................24
Feeling safe .....................................................................................................30
Concluding discussion........................................................................... 35
References............................................................................................ 39
Appendix .............................................................................................. 41
1. Informed consent - participant .......................................................................41
2. Informed consent - legal guardian...................................................................42
3. Interview Guide............................................................................................43
Preword
My interest for how youths experience their daily life and safety in the 'pacified' low-income
communities of Rio de Janeiro grew during a three-months internship that I did at the NGO Instituto
Promundo in Rio de Janeiro in 2012. During that internship I was part of a research team preparing a
study on how younger children experienced their safety in low-income Rio de Janeiro communities
with a pacifying police unit. Hence I wanted to add to that study research on how youths experience
the same situation. Also, living in Rio de Janeiro for a period of time makes you aware of the
insecurity that the inhabitants many times experience due to the fact that it is considered one of the
world's most dangerous cities. In total I spent six months in Rio de Janeiro between 2012-2013, which
ended in the interviews that constitute the material of this study. During this period there were intense
discussions in the media and among the people of Rio about whether or not the UPP police units had
succeeded in their mission or not and there was a huge interest for the issue. I would like to thank my
advisor Ingrid Olsson and Instituto Promundo for enabling a contact between me and the community
where I found the interviewees and for all the support that they gave me during the internship and the
preparations for the material gathering for the thesis. I would especially like to thank all of the young
participants of this study for sharing with me their lifestories and their time, as well as my contact in
the community who helped me in choosing and getting in contact with the participants.
1
Introduction
One of the fundamental human rights stipulated in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is the
child's right to life and maximum survival and development. According to the same convention
children are to be protected from all forms of violence, including physical or mental violence and they
are to be protected from armed conflict (UN, 1989). These rights are severely violated for many
children and youths living in the low-income communities of Rio de Janeiro, a city of extreme
contrasts. On the one hand it is called cidade maravilhosa, wonderful city, and is a dream destination
for tourists from all over the world. On the other hand, it is a city where violence is a part of every day
life. Since the 1980’s, drug trafficking gangs and the police have practically been involved in a civil
war over the control of territory and of power (Trindade, Borges, Ribeiro & Rocha, 2012). The
principal battlefield has been the low-income communities or favelas, as these are commonly referred
to, and the principle victims of homicide have been male youths (Barker, 2005). The drug traffickers
themselves are many times teenage boys. Thus, if the police authorities intervene, they are most likely
to be the target, innocent or guilty (Human Rights Watch, 2009). They are also the most likely to be
the victims in violence between rivalling drug cartels. Barker (2005) argues that homicides of this kind
in Brazil have even led to a demographic imbalance with fewer young men than young women.
Using armoured cars and helicopters the BOPE (the Battalion of Special Police Operations), a police
unite specialized in armed conflict in urban areas, enters the communities to chase drug traffickers.
This police strategy has often led to deadly confrontation. In 2007 alone, over 1 300 persons were
killed by police officers (BBC News Online, 2009; Human Rights Watch, 2009), an extensive part of
these being extrajudicial executions according to Human Rights Watch (2009) and not an act of self
protection as the police authorities claims.
In Rio de Janeiro, there are around 900 favelas or low-income communities. In contrast to low-income
areas in other cities that are situated miles away from the city centre, many of these communities creep
up Rio’s many morros or hills right in the middle of the city and next to the most fancy areas, within
eyesight from the famous beaches of Ipanema and Copacabana. The situation is thus tense since a
military conflict is practically taking place in the middle of the city. To restore peace and end the death
shootings between the police forces and the drug traffickers, several intents have been made to
establish a different sort of policing. They have all failed, until an initiative was taken in 2008 by the
authorities of Rio de Janeiro to create a special community police unit called Unidade de Polícia
Pacificadora (UPP) or the Pacifying Police Unit (Trindade et al., 2012). This initiative consists of two
phases. First, BOPE (the Battalion of Special Police Operations) occupies the community in order to
search for arms and drugs and to arrest members of the drug cartels. When this is done, the UPP social
phase takes over. This means that a UPP unit especially trained and chosen for being community
police officers is installed in the community, a police office is built and the community police work
starts. This includes getting to know the residents and the area, taking measures to ensure the security
of the residents and improving social services, access to education, electricity, construction work and
all other aspects that the residents are in need of. The purpose with the UPP, as told by José Mariano
Beltrame, secretary of state for public security in Rio de Janeiro at the time of writing this thesis, is not
necessarily to end the trafficking, it is to remove the arms from the streets and to end the armed
conflict. This aim is described as more realistic than in earlier attempts to solve the conflict (Serrano2
Berthet, 2012, p. 43). Today, only four years after the first UPP unit was installed in Santa Marta
2009, 32 communities all over Rio have been ‘pacified’ (Governo do Rio de Janeiro, 2014), as it is
called, and more are to come. The newspapers were quick to tell a story of success, the homicide rate
dropped by 80 percent and the expulsion of drug lords has been described as “hugely popular”, both
among community residents and non-community residents, and especially among mothers of teenage
boys (Glenny, 2012). The government of Rio de Janeiro also distributed a story of success. On the
UPP official website one can read that the general sentiment of the residents living in communities
with UPP is that life improved in many ways. It is also stated that the population, who are confiding
more in the police authorities and collaborating in revealing hidings of arms and drug dealers, now
acknowledges the UPP units and has a more positive image of police officers (Governo do Rio de
Janeiro, 2014).
Many times the security of the children has been emphasized. Maria Luisa Barros, in a series of
articles from 2010 in the Rio de Janeiro newspaper O Dia, reports through interviews with children,
parents, teachers and police officers on how the situation for children and adolescents has improved.
Her main conclusions are that in communities with UPP police units, children can now go to school
without being afraid of stray bullets, explosion of grenades or seeing dead bodies on their way to
school. This, together with police officers' voluntary work as leisure leaders at schools, has almost
doubled the school presence and increased trust towards the police units, both among adults and
children. Also, she says, youths involved in drug trafficking have come back to school (Barros, 2010).
Researchers share the same conclusions although presenting a more nuanced picture accounting also
for negative aspects (Machado da Silva, 2010; Trindade et al., 2012). This will be further discussed in
the chapter on previous research.
According to Yero, Othman, Abu Samah, D'Silva and Sulaiman (2012) there exists a consensus
among governments and police institutions as to the usefulness of a community oriented policing as a
means of reducing citizen fear, improving quality of life and creating safer cities. However, the
implementation needs to reflect the differences in how societies look like. Thus, in order to improve
public security it is of considerate interest to investigate the perceptions of the residents of these
communities on their situation and their sensations of security or insecurity (Powell, Skouteris &
Murfett, 2007). In fact, the philosophy behind community policing is that the public should feel that
the police authorities are there in the service of the citizens and what they consider important in their
community, The public should feel that that they are "their police". Thus, the public must be highly
listened to and involved and in the centre of police work (Roos, Lundberg & Korsell, 2011, p. 13).
However, the most vulnerable residents, and the residents that are most often forgotten about, are
children and youths (Human Rights Watch, 1999; Johnson, Agbényiga & Bahemuka, 2013). This has
been acknowledged in the UN Convention on the rights of the Child, where one of the core principles
is article 12:
State parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to
express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due
weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.
Taking community policing philosophy one step further it is actually the police authorities' duty to
consider the needs and the rights of children, a child here meaning until 18 years old following the UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child, given that Brazil signed and ratified the UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child. The Brazilian government did this as early as in 1990, one year after the
convention was created and the same year as it came into force. Since the convention is legally
binding once it has been ratified, Brazil is obliged to respect its articles. Article 3 of the convention
states:
3
In all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions,
courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interest of the child shall be a
primary consideration.
For the purpose of this thesis it is of importance to clarify the meaning and the use of the terms
security, insecurity, feeling safe and feeling unsafe since they will all appear. In Portuguese the same
word, 'segurança', is used to cover both the meaning of 'security' and 'safety' in English. Thus, I had to
make a choice regarding how to translate this Portuguese word in English. The word 'security' has
traditionally been used primarily to talk about for example national or global security. Because of this
and as a critique towards this narrow concept of security, the term 'human security' was promoted in
The Human Development Report from 1994 by the United Nation's Development Programme (UNDP)
and it was defined as a concept that was more occupied with ordinary people's perceptions of security
in their daily life, including different aspects such as economic security, food security, health security,
environmental security, personal security, community security and political security. Also, 'human
security' parts from the assumption that people's perceptions of what is security differ depending on
the context (UNDP, 1994, p. 24-25). This thesis shares the same understanding. Still, most of the times
I have chosen to use the word 'safety' over 'security' when the participants talk about segurança since I
believe that this word better reflects what the study is aiming at, namely the inner feelings of the
participants and how they perceive their safety. The word 'security' is used when the discussion
evolves more around the police authorities and their mission. However, when the participants speak
about insegurança this is sometimes translated with 'feeling unsafe' and sometimes with 'insecurity'
depending on the context. Mainly though, the terms 'feeling safe' and 'feeling unsafe' are used.
Throughout the paper the word community will be used when referring to these communities since the
word favela can be, and often is, used pejoratively. Also, community or comunidade in Portuguese
was the word that the young interviewees in this study used to describe where they lived.
Background and problem formulation
The main problem that this thesis departs from is the fact that the police authorities are traditionally
not considered a positive force in Brazilian society by young residents of the low-income
communities, who are used to living under the constant threat of an outburst of violent and often
deadly confront between drug traffickers and police officers. With the introduction of the pacifying
police unit, that picture is slowly changing in communities with UPPs. However, trust is not gained
easily after a long history of police corruption and abuse (Human Rights Watch, 2009; Trindade et al.,
2012) Also, despite the story of success that has often been told in the media, the situation is far from
stable and several complaints on abusive behaviour by police officers have already been raised.
The previous research that has been done in the Western context on children/youths and how they see
police officers have focused on how children perceive police officers in general (Low & Durkin, 2001;
Powell et al., 2008), in community police work (Roos et al., 2011) and in domestic violence situations
(McGee, 2000; Mullender et al., 2002; Richardson-Foster, Stanley, Miller & Thomson, 2012;
Robinson & Stroshine, 2005). Similarly the research in Brazil on children/youths in relation to the
police authorities seems to be limited but presents studies on how street children see the police officers
(Ribeiro, 2008) and how youths and children from the comunidades see the police officers (Goldstein,
2003). However, shortly after the installation of UPP units in Rio de Janeiro low-income communities,
studies on how this affected the residents began appearing, including youth participants, and it is a
growing field. The main results from this research are that the crime rate has drastically dropped,
including homicides, that abusive behaviour of police officers is less and that the feelings of safety
4
among the residents have improved with relieved residents as a result (Machado da Silva, 2010;
Trindade et al., 2012; Serrano-Berthet, 2012).
However, none of these studies has focused exclusively on youths. At present, a team of researchers at
Instituto Promundo is seeking answers to how smaller children experience their security/insecurity,
both in communities with and without pacifying police units. My study will thus add to that
knowledge the perspectives of youths. Also, since this study parts from phenomenological theory it
will go further than studies with other theoretical approaches in exploring what often taken for granted
words mean for these particular youths in this particular context. For example, what is 'feeling safe'
and 'feeling unsafe' for these youths?
In general, there seem to exist scarce research on children and youths’ perceptions of the police
authorities or police officers, thus, this study aims at making a contribution to that area of research.
The aim is that findings of the present study can be of both applied and theoretical significance. On an
applied level, an aim is that it can be used in local work to improve public security. On a theoretical
level, the findings can hopefully further the understandings of the relationships between police officers
and youths in Rio de Janeiro low-income communities and on feelings of what is 'feeling safe' and
'feeling unsafe' from these youths’ perspectives.
The participants in this study will be youths of majority age in one low-income community in the
centre of Rio de Janeiro that was pacified in 2011. The reason for choosing youths over 18 years old
even though this study parts from the UN convention of the rights of the child is due to ethical reasons
and will be discussed in the method chapter. The study will depart from a phenomenological
theoretical and methodological framework.
Children's perspective/s
This study aims at having a children's perspective. Even if the participants in this study are not
children according to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child since they are over 18 years old,
the study entails their experiences when underage. Doing research from 'children's perspectives' and
using the term in political contexts is something that has had a big impact in the Scandinavian
countries (see Lindgren & Halldén, 2001; Sommer, Pramling Samuelsson & Hundeide, 2010).
According to Sommer et al. (2010), if the term children's perspective is used, children as research
participants is mandatory since the aim is to capture children's own experiences and thoughts, which is
the purpose of this thesis and a reason for choosing to have a phenomenological approach.
5
Aim and research questions
The aim of this study was to investigate how adolescents in one of Rio´s low-income communities
experience their life in a community in relation to 'feeling safe' and 'feeling unsafe' before and after the
introduction of the Unidade da Polícia Pacificadora (UPP). The research questions were:
•
How do the participants experience their daily life in the community?
•
What do they tell about the difference from before the UPP was installed?
•
What are their perceptions on what is "feeling safe" and "feeling unsafe"?
•
How do they perceive the UPP police officers and their work in the community?
Previous research
The aim with this part of the thesis is to give the reader a background to previous research on
children's and adolescent's perceptions of police officers and on the results of the installation of UPP
units in Rio de Janeiro communities. Due to the size of this study the scope of the content is selective
rather than exhaustive and it covers the research found most relevant for the aim of the study.
Children's and adolescents' perspectives on police
officers
In the Western context Powell et al. (2008) state that there exists an extensive literature on the public's
perceptions on and attitudes towards the police authorities. However, there seems to exist limited
research on children’s and adolescent’s perspectives on the police. Powell et al. (2008) found that
children between 5-8 years old tended to focus on the punitive role of the police. Very few children
emphasized non-punitive aspects. The results were irrespective of aspects such as age and former
experiences of the police authorities or whether they remembered having seen television shows
involving the police.
In an Australian/New Zealand study with children from grade 1 to 7, Low and Durkin (2001)
concluded that the more children view television police shows, the more inaccurate is their perception
of real life police work. The authors pointed out that opportunities for the children in this study to
observe law enforcement activities were mainly through TV shows, since they had little direct contact
with the police. Powell et al. (2008) argue that accurate perceptions of the police is critical from early
childhood, since successful relations between the public and the police build on trust and a positive
image of the police as in the service of the public.
It is likely that the same goes for the pacifying police units of Rio de Janeiro. If so, in order to succeed
they need to build a relationship with the public based on trust. However, the reality for many lower
class Brazilian children and youths is strikingly different from the reality of the children in the Low
and Durkin study. Their image of the police is based on direct and most often violent personal
experiences. Ribeiro (2008) found in a study with school-age street children in São Paulo, a city with a
similar situation as Rio de Janeiro (Human Rights Watch, 2009), that the police officer was described
6
as “an enemy, a fearful figure and one of the most agonizing street experiences.” (Ribeiro, 2008, p. 89)
Instead of protecting them the children said that police violence against them occurred in three forms;
alleged sexual abuse, systematic police persecution in order to, against their will, get the children off
the streets and physically and verbally aggressive actions with the intention of humiliating them.
Goldstein (2003) in her anthropological study from a Rio de Janeiro comunidade gives the same
image. She tells of children and youths terrified of being mistaken for street children, picked up by the
police and interrogated by the police using verbal and physical aggression even when no crime had
been committed.
Returning to the Western context, other studies where children and youths' perceptions on the police
are focused are studies on domestic violence. McGee (2000) found that younger children tended to see
police interventions in domestic violence situations as proof that the violence was grave. In this study,
adolescents were more critical to the police’s intervention than younger children. However, Mullender
et al. (2002, p. 220-21) found that both youths and younger children wanted the perpetrator to be
removed effectively even if they showed mixed feelings such as love, fear, hatred and sadness towards
him (in the study in question the perpetrators were only fathers and step-fathers). Also, they
complained that the police were not effective enough and that the police did not talk to them directly
about what had happened, even when the child was the one dialling 911. Children in this study also
acknowledged that they were aware of the police officers power, that they would have needed
someone from the police to sit down and reassure them that everything was all right and that the police
would not take them or their mother away. Mullender et al. (2002, p. 221) conclude that police officers
would need to enhance their knowledge in talking and listening to children.
Similarly, Richardson-Foster et al. (2012) argue that children are often not reported about enough and
are even missing in police reports on interventions in domestic violence situations. This, they argue,
shows the limited interaction between police officers and children. Both Richardson-Foster et al.
(2012) and Robinson and Stroshine (2005) found that children and adolescents see the police as a
possibility to protection at the same time as they are cynical towards the police. Thus, police officers'
attitude when communicating with children and youths is crucial, since they want to be taken seriously
and their experiences to be validated. They want to be believed. Richardson-Foster et al. (2012)
conclude that the police have a duty to inform children and adolescents, as with adults, and to
acknowledge their involvement in domestic violence situations. Not least, in order to be able to link
the child to necessary support services. Correspondingly, in a Swedish report on the local police work
in Stockholm based on interviews with police officers among others, Roos et al. (2011) conclude that
communication with and a good attitude towards youths have resulted in less attacks on the police and
in better relationships built on trust, with the police officers. Similarly, Schneider (1999), in a study
with a participant observation approach on community policing in socially disadvantaged
neighbourhoods, concludes that communicative problems between the police and the residents limited
the positive results of community policing and crime prevention. Also, the asymmetrical relations
between the police and many of the residents, was enhanced. He states that communication problems
included a one-way dialogue and that the police was especially unable to communicate well with
special needs and minority groups. Schneider (1999) concludes that there is a need to create a more
empathetic communication pattern in community policing and this way overcoming some of the
communicative obstacles that furthers an already asymmetrical power relation between the police
officers and the public. I argue that this is yet more important when it comes to youths or children and
the police since the relation between adults and children is already an asymmetrical power relation due
to age and the dependence of children on adults.
7
Conclusively, international research on children and youths’ perceptions of the police is mostly
focused on police interventions in domestic violence situations in which the police are seen with
mixed feelings, both as a possibility for security and as an agent of power and uncertainty concerning
how this power will be used. However, a recurring theme is children and youths’ need for
communication and dialogue with the police.
The pacifying police units (UPP) in Rio de Janeiro
Although it was only four years ago that the Unidade da Polícia Pacificadora (UPP) was initiated the
results have been researched in several studies. Professor Machado da Silva (2010) concludes, two
years after the initiation, in an argumentative article that, at that time, there existed a euphoric
sensation in Rio de Janeiro about the success of the UPPs. Media spread the picture of a united Rio
where both comunidade residents and non-comunidade residents were joined in the celebration of the
new police force. As shown earlier the picture is more nuanced than this, something that Machado de
Silva underlines. However, he concludes, the euphoria was not totally unfounded. There are grounded
evidence that: a, the UPPs are an innovative force in fighting crime; b, where they operate they have
generally achieved good results; c, even if not non-existent, police violence and abuse are less in areas
controlled by the UPPs; d, the feelings of safety among the residents in communities with UPPs have
improved significantly by the presence of the police officers; e, due to the intense media reporting the
sensation of safety has improved also among non-comunidade residents and among residents in
communities that are probable of getting a UPP unit installed, thus the whole city of Rio is
experiencing more safety (Machado da Silva, 2010).
Trindade et al. in 2012 made an extensive study on the impact of the presence of UPP when it comes
to criminality reduction, the social climate between the UPP police officers and the inhabitants, their
sense of security and how their lives had been affected in various ways. In this study semi-structured
interviews were included as part of the methodology and youths were among the participants. The
main findings were that people in communities with UPP felt relieved that the shooting and the killing
had ended, that the trafficking gangs were no longer armed and they felt that they could walk around
freely without fear of getting in between conflicts with the police and the drug gangs. However, the
fear that the drug gangs would take over the control once again affected their way of socializing or
having too much contact with the police. In case of a retake of power by the drug gangs or the UPP
leaving the community the fear was that the ones that had sympathized with the police would be
severely punished (Trindade et al., 2012). Thus, Trindade et al. (2012) state that it is not so easy for
the police to gain people's trust after decades of abuse and neglect. The most critical voices were found
in communities not yet 'pacified'. Also, the feelings towards the police presence were mixed. There
were both feelings of relief and of discomfort due to the controlling function of the police. Some also
told of police abuse in communities with UPP. However, the social control over the police authority,
that is, being able to denunciate abuse for example, was referred to as much better than before the
'pacification'. A conflict between the youths and the police was that the police now controlled their
social life, such as the famous funk dancing parties in the nights. Moreover, a word that was often
referred to both among police officers and inhabitants was respect, and the importance of mutual
respect. Another important finding was that the inhabitants, this varied in different places, experienced
an improvement of social services, education, employment, infrastructure etc. Also, the possibilities of
political life and political rights improved since the drug lords are no longer in control, and the social
8
stigma of living in a community has become smaller. In other words, the UPP seems to have promoted
more interaction between the communities and the surrounding society (Trindade et al., 2012).
Serrano-Berthet (2012), as the leader of a research team for the World Bank, has made another study
on the effect of the UPP based on field research. However, this study cannot be said to be neutral since
the World Bank has been supporting the UPP initiative since the start, something they declare in their
introduction (Serrano-Berthet, 2012, pp. 13-14). The study’s main findings were similar to the ones
found by Trindade et al. (2012). Among positive things were the possibility of walking freely in the
community and outside without the threat of getting in between the police and the drug gangs, that
social services and social programs can now work more effectively and that the borders between the
comunidades and the surrounding city are slowly opening up. The study also reported mixed feelings
about the regulation of amusements for the youths and that the police's role in solving conflicts
between residents was not clear enough, that is, the residents worried about an abuse of power by the
police officers (Serrano-Berthet, 2012)
Conclusively, the research done on the results of the pacifying police unit (UPP) in Rio de Janeiro has
involved youths. However, none has focused entirely on youths and through in-depth individual
interviews. This is where this study aims at filling a gap. In the Rio de Janeiro context youths have
most often been the direct targets of police violence, and many conflicts with the police and the
residents are between police officers and youths. Through the interpretative phenomenological
approach, the purpose of this thesis is to go further than previous research in exploring what "feeling
safe" and "feeling unsafe" actually mean for these particular youths in this context.
Theoretical framework
Since the aim of this study was to research individual and subjective experiences and thoughts of the
participants this study has an interpretative phenomenological approach and the empirical material will
be gathered through semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions (Willig, 2008).
Interpretative phenomenological analysis
IPA, interpretative phenomenological analysis, is phenomenological in that it is concerned with
exploring how the informants make meaning and sense of their experiences (Chapman & Smith, 2002,
p. 126). It does, however, allow a move from purely describing to interpreting since it recognizes that
it is inevitable that the researcher's own view of the world influences the study as well as the
interaction between the researcher and the informants (Willig, 2008).
However, IPA gives the researcher the tools to go beyond preconceived ideas. As Willig (2007, p.
210) puts it: “ I wanted to find out what such activities [extreme sports] may add to the quality of
people’s lives and what it may mean to them to expose themselves to experiences that are dangerous
and potentially unsettling. At the same time, I wanted to keep an open mind regarding the extent to
which taking part in extreme sports is, in fact, an extreme or unsettling experience for those who take
part.” This is of importance for this study since what is experienced as 'feeling safe' and 'feeling
unsafe' might vary in different contexts and from person to person. Thus, the interest of this study is
how youths make meaning out of 'feeling safe' and 'feeling unsafe' terms of their lives before and after
9
the ‘pacification’ and how they experience the UPP police officers and their work in the community,
rather than presuming that what is commonly seen as unsafe or safe situations or settings are so also in
this context. As Willig (2008) puts it, in phenomenology it is not possible to separate the world of
subjects and objects from our experience of the same. The appearance of something to someone
depends on the context and the mental orientation of the perceiver, that is, his/her intentionality. I have
chosen this theoretical frame since my interest here is precisely to see how young residents, with their
proper intentionality, experience a process and a situation, that is, the 'pacification' and the UPP unit,
which many times risks being trapped in the dualism success or failure.
Furthermore, IPA recognizes the gap that might exist between a situation and the person's perception
of it and goes on to explore the character of this gap. Hence, IPA might be useful if the researcher
wants to explore peoples’ different perceptions and descriptions of the same situation (Chapman &
Smith, 2002). However, IPA sees the participants meaning-making as influenced both by individual
experiences and by social interaction with others (Willig, 2008) thus, making individual interviews
might catch both subjective experiences and youth’s experiences as a group.
A problematic issue with IPA is to what extent it is possible to rely on the informants' descriptions of
their experiences, since language in phenomenology is considered merely as a means of
communicating and describing experiences (Willig, 2008). Thus, in IPA the researcher must "assume
that language provides participants with the necessary tools to capture that experience" (Willig, 2008,
p. 66). The critique lies in that through the words that we use to talk about an experience we create
only one of several possible versions of this experience (Willig, 2008). However, in all kinds of
qualitative research only one of several possible versions of analysis is presented since the investigator
always has to make choices. Furthermore, Willig (2008) asks, if language is crucial when doing
research from a phenomenological perspective, to what extent is it possible for the participant to use
language to communicate the richness and subtleties of a personal experience? Willig (2008) also
argues that IPA for this reason might be excluding in that informants who for some reason are not able
to articulate these rich accounts are not suitable as informants. In the case of this particular study I did
not experience a problem for the youths in giving me detailed and articulate stories, it was rather I who
sometimes had problems due to the fact that Portuguese is not my maternal language (this will be
more thoroughly discussed in the method chapter). However, I tried to ask them questions in order to
make them develop their accounts and thus reach a deeper understanding of how they make meaning.
However, Willig (2008) also states that IPA recognizes that it is never possible to fully understand the
experience of the research participants. I argue that it might not always be the aim to fully and through
rich and detailed accounts apprehend how other people see the world. Maybe it is sometimes enough
to get a glimpse of another person's experience. Moreover, it is not only the participant’s responsibility
to create rich accounts of an experience, it lies as well on the shoulders of the researcher to listen
carefully to the story of the informant, to pose the right questions and to interview in a sensitive way in
order to get as close to the participant’s own perspective as possible (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009).
10
Methodological approach and
design
Since this study has a qualitative and interpretative phenomenological approach the material was
gathered through in-depth individual and semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions. This
method is especially suitable when doing IPA since the purpose with this theoretical and
methodological approach is to interpret people's accounts of their life-stories and how they make
meaning and sense of their experiences (Chapman & Smith, 2002, p. 126; Willig, 2008), which is also
the aim of this study. Thus in-depth accounts are necessary as well as an open structure in order to let
the participant get as much freedom as possible to tell his/her story according to his/her experience.
Selection of community/participants and
limitations
The recruitment of the community and of the participants was done through Insituto Promundo
(http://www.promundo.org.br/), a non-governmental organization working with both research and
local work in relation to human rights, gender, non-violence and children's rights. Criteria was that the
participants should be between 18 and 21 years old and that they should live in a community where the
UPP police unit had been established some years ago. The reason for that is that usually it takes a
while for the UPP and the community to relate to each other after the ‘pacification’. Thus, I wanted
participants from a community where the UPP was already established and into the second phase, the
UPP social, in order for the participants to have more and richer experiences both of the time before
and after the ‘pacification’.
Following these criteria, the participants in this study were youths of majority age in one low-income
community in the centre of Rio de Janeiro that was pacified in 2011. The reason for choosing youths
over 18 years old was due to ethical considerations. My advisor at Instituto Promundo advised me not
to make a study with younger children as participants since the topic was sensitive and thus the ethical
considerations would have been to advanced for a master's thesis with one single researcher. Also,
research with youths under 18 years old in Brazil requires the legal guardians approval. Due to the
difficulty of getting access to the field it would have been too time consuming to go through this
process. However, the youths that I interviewed had all lived their whole adolescence in the
community. Most of them were 18 or 19 and none was over 21. However, one participant was 17
years old (the reason for this will be explained in the section below). Thus, they had recent experiences
of being a teenager and living under the rule of the drug lords and the youngest participants also
experienced the 'pacification' and the first year after when they were still under 18.
Participants
Ultimately, seven participants were selected for this thesis by my contact person in the community, a
female working as a coordinator in social work and activities in the community. In order to achieve
disparity she took great concern in choosing both youths that were active in political activities in the
community and youths that were not so active and had relatives in the drug cartel. Three of the
participants were female and four were male and they were all given fictive names in order to preserve
11
their anonymity. They were all between 18 and 21 years old except for one boy, 'Fabião', who was 17,
which I found out first during the interview. However, since his legal guardian signed an informed
consent after the interview was done he was allowed to participate despite being under-aged. One girl,
'Taís', 19 years old, was a mother of two. The rest of the participants did not have children and were
'Maria Luísa', 18; 'Leonardo', 20; 'Nelson', 21; 'Bruno', 19 and 'Marta', 18. They were either
unemployed, studying, working or preparing to proceed with higher studies.
The interview guide
The material was gathered through semi-structured individual interviews with open-ended questions.
An interview guide (appendix 3) was written in Portuguese. This guide was checked by a resident
living in another low-income community than the one for this study, to see to that the language was
correct but also that it was a type of language that is suitable when speaking to Rio de Janeiro youths
from low-income communities. The interview guide was also showed to Marco Aurélio Martins at
Instituto Promundo who are used to performing interviews with youths in this context, and adapted
according to his advice. Open-ended questions with an experiential focus were used and further openended questions were then posed to follow up and to encourage the participants to elaborate on their
first account. Questions about their feelings about the events were included (Willig, 2007).
Conducting the interviews
Due to difficulties in getting access to the field the first months of the field work were mostly spent
trying to get access and meanwhile doing research about previous studies on the subject and getting as
much background as possible about the topic via media, people that I spoke to that lived in Rio, both
in communities with and without UPP as well as in the surrounding society, and simply through living
in the city. Due to late access the interviews were finally done during three days in a row the ultimate
week of my staying in Rio de Janeiro. The interviews were recorded and took place in different places
inside the community that I was referred to by my contact and by the participants. Most of them took
place outside the community house, one took place in one girl's home and another one in the work
place of my contact person. These places were not private and it happened that people walked past us,
said hello, and then went away. Still, they were peaceful settings and the interviews could be
performed without too much disturbance. Due to ethical considerations I asked the participants if they
felt comfortable in case someone would hear what we were doing, and all of them said that they felt
so. Also, a problem with performing the interviews in these places was that, occasionally, the
surrounding noise of, for example, an aeroplane passing, made it hard to discern everything that was
said in the interviews. These are the reasons why some parts of the interviews were not possible to
transcribe. Apart from occasional visitors the participant and I were the only ones present, however, in
one case two boys were interviewed together since they insisted on it and it was not possible to make
them change their minds. The length of the interviews varied, from 9 minutes (the short length of this
interview will be explained in the chapter on ethical considerations) to 40 minutes with most
interviews taking 30-35 minutes.
12
Analysis
The analysis was based on IPA as developed by Willig (2007). First, I transcribed the interviews word
for word in Portuguese. In the transcriptions I aimed at being true to the adolescent's own use of the
Portuguese language, thus grammatical errors have not been corrected and colloquial language was
transcribed the way it is pronounced. In some cases when I had difficulties in understanding what a
special word or phrase meant, I wrote it down and took help from native Brazilians in order to clarify
it. Many times, however, the participants themselves had already explained to me what the words that
they thought would be difficult for me to understand meant. Also, it happened in many of the
interviews that I asked them to explain to me the significance of some colloquial words. As mentioned
in the previous chapter, sometimes when it was impossible to hear what was said on the recording due
to for example surrounding noise, these parts were not transcribed.
Once I had the transcriptions ready they were worked through one by one according to Willig (2007).
First, words, phrases and statements relevant to the phenomenon were looked for. These could be
descriptive, clarifying or evaluative. Second, the statements were put together in groups of different
themes and a general statement per theme was written in an attempt to capture the essence of that
particular theme. Next, the transcriptions with their themes and general statements were integrated to
produce an overall account of the phenomenon. First, the themes whose meaning all of the participants
shared were selected, then the themes selected by some of the participants wit an indication of how
many and finally, the themes that were invoked only by one participant. A description of the
phenomenon and a final analysis was then produced drawing first on the themes that were shared by
most of the participants and secondly on the themes not universally shared (Willig, 2007, pp. 211-12).
When these themes did not contradict or conflict with other themes, I included them in the description.
In cases where they did contradict other themes they were included as a way of drawing attention to
individual different experiences of the same phenomenon (Willig 2007, pp. 211-12; Willig 2008).
Due to geographical distance and the sensitivity of the topic I came to the conclusion that it was
neither possible nor ethically safe to involve the participants in any validation process as described by
Willig (2007). Since I did not have the possibility to return in person, the results would have had to be
sent to the participants either by post or by email. They could easily have gotten lost or in the hands of
the wrong persons, thus I estimated that it would not be safe due to ethical reasons. However, the
results have been sent to my contact person in order for her to be given the possibility to review the
study and see if she finds that it does justice to the youths' experiences.
Issues of language and translation
Language is, of course, a critical issue when doing research in a language other than your mother
tongue. I did not want to use a translator due to the secondary problems that this can lead to in terms of
the risk that the participants' accounts might get distorted in the translation process as well as the
power imbalance that it means involving more people than the researcher and the participant in the
interview situation (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009). Thus, I wanted to do the interviews myself. Since I
was already fluent in Spanish I had a big advantage learning Portuguese since the languages are so
closely related. Also, I had already before obtained a basic level of Brazilian Portuguese through a 30
hp course that I took through the Stockholm University, but to further prepare myself for my
internship and field work in Rio de Janeiro, I went to a language school in Portugal for one month the
summer before going to Brazil in order to develop my skills. Through these preparations and during
13
my three months of internship I developed the necessary skills to be able to perform the interviews
myself.
As briefly discussed in the introduction, another problem arises when translating from Portuguese to
English, since the latter is the language used for the text of the study. Thus, when the quotations used
in the results part were translated into English, I tried to be true to their use of the language to the
highest possible extent, however, they are more freely translated in order to best capture the spirit of
the language. One problematic issue was that these youths used a lot of slang expressions and these
were at times difficult to translate into English, since this is not my maternal language either.
However, in the translations my aim has been to be as true to the youths' way of expressing themselves
as possible. In the transcriptions of the interviews I have therefore tried to maintain the fluent character
of how the participants told me their stories. Thus, whenever they paused to think or when there was a
little pause I have written '...' to show this. However, when the dots are between parentesis, '(...)', this
means that a part of the interview has not been transcribed due to the reasons referred to before, or in
the quotes chosen for the results part, the '(...)' might be a part of the quote that I chose not to include
since it was not of importance for the discussion.
Ethical considerations
Doing qualitative research poses a range of ethical questions in all stages of the research process, from
establishing the purpose of the study, through gathering the material, transcribing and analysing to the
publishing of the results. First of all, it is important to acknowledge the asymmetric power relation
between the researcher and the informant in which the researcher is the one in a position of power
(Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009). Thus, in accordance with the ethical guidelines to be followed when
doing research within the social sciences, all participants (and in one case also the legal guardian) have
signed an informed consent (appendix 1 & 2), thus they have also been informed of the fact that they
at any given point can withdraw their participation and that they will be anonymous in the study
(Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009; Vetenskapsrådet, 2011).
One issue to take under consideration is how I as a white, middle-class young Swedish female
researcher might affect the informants or the interaction between researcher and informant when the
interviews are being conducted. It has been argued that differences in background might hinder trust
towards the researcher and thus leading to the informant censoring her- or himself. Nevertheless, it has
been shown that similarities in background might present an equally significant obstacle. The
researcher might for example overlook issues since they seem familiar or taken-for-granted or the
informants might not tell everything since they take for granted that the researcher is familiar with the
context (Emerson et al., 2011). Also, it is important to bear in mind that Rio de Janeiro is a divided
city, there is the 'favela' , the comunidade, and there is ‘the asphalt’ or the real society, outside the
'favela'. Suska (2011) in her anthropological bachelor thesis on the results of the pacifying police units
in the communities tells of the difficulty of getting access to the research field until the residents
understood that she was not from ‘the asphalt’, but from England. Thus for Suska, in this specific
context, it was easier being a foreigner than being Brazilian. Emerson et al. (2011) similarly tells of a
study where the researcher had the same ethnicity but different social class and how this created
suspicion among the informants (pp. 163-64). When doing my research I did not experience that me
being a foreigner was a problem. Rather, I believe it helped me to get more detailed explanations and
information since the participants took great care in explaining me everything that I did not understand
14
or that they assumed that I would not understand. Also the fact that Portuguese is not my maternal
language but theirs might even out some of the power imbalance between researcher and participant.
Yet another, and perhaps more important question, is the social effects of the knowledge produced and
how being a research participant will affect the informants. Simply put, the knowledge produced will
in some way affect our understanding of the human conditions, and the human interaction during the
interviews will have an affect on the interviewees. In research within the social sciences both the
scientific and human interests should be taken into consideration. A well-conducted interview can be
enriching and bring positive outcomes for the informant such as heightened insight about him/herself,
but the researcher has to be sensitive to how far one can go in posing intimate questions, not least
since interviews on intimate subjects may lead to a quasitherapeutic situation for which the researcher
is not trained and which is not the purpose of doing research. The informant might as well reveal
information that she did not intend to expose but that the intimacy of the interview situation compelled
her to reveal (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009). This was the reason for why one of the interviews is
significantly shorter than the other ones. The girl that I was interviewing revealed to me that the police
before the installation of the UPP had killed her brother. I chose not to go forward with the interview
since it was noticeable that she was very disturbed and did not want to talk, although I tried to move
on to another subject. Thus, I decided to end the interview based on the discussion above.
The quality of the study
Since the participants are fewer than in research with for example questionnaires it is not possible to
generalize the results, they can rather be seen as an example of how these particular participants in this
particular context made meaning of their experiences. However, this does not mean that it is not
possible to find similar results in similar contexts. Also, what might be perceived as a loss of
generalizability can be seen as a gain of the richness of the accounts that can be achieved with this
method. This can further a deeper understanding of the context, which, on an applied level, might lead
to solutions that are more adequately adapted to the reality of the people that are the target of different
social programs. When it comes to methodological reflections I find that the interpretative
phenomenological approach that was used in this thesis gave me the freedom and the possibility to
explore already taken for granted concepts through the eyes of the participants. It also enabled me to
do in-depth interviews and analysis of these youths' accounts. However, as Willig (2007, p. 216)
concludes, in the process of identifying and explaining themes and producing final categories, there is
an inevitable translation of the participants accounts in which the researcher has to abandon the
participants' discourse and express their meanings in his or her own words. Also, since these
interviews were performed in Portuguese, which is not my maternal language but the maternal
language of the participants, this aspect is even more pregnant. However, this fact might have helped
balancing the unequal power relation between researcher and participant that must always be
considered when doing qualitative research (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009). Finally, due to geographical
distance and the sensitivity of the topic I came to the conclusion that it was neither possible nor
ethically safe to involve the participants in any validation process as described by Willig (2007). Since
I did not have the possibility to return in person, the results would have had to be sent to the
participants either by post or by email. They could easily have gotten lost or in the hands of the wrong
persons, thus I estimated that it would not be safe due to ethical reasons.
15
Results and discussion
This part of the thesis presents the results from the analysis of the interviews. It is divided in four parts
that correspond to the four general themes that were found in the material. They are: Life in the
community, Ambiguity, Feeling unsafe and Feeling safe and will be presented in this order with a
summary at the end of each section. The themes will many times go into each other since they are
often intertwined. I argue that this is inevitable; a complex material mirrors the complex and often
ambiguous reality of the young participants. The research questions will be answered in a concluding
chapter based on the analysis of the themes occurring in the material. The names of the participants are
the fictitious names presented in the method chapter and in the quotes I refer to myself as the
interviewer and researcher as 'Me'. The English translations will be followed by the original
transcriptions in Portuguese. The participants sometimes talk about 'the police/a polícia' and
sometimes about 'police officers/policiais'. In my translation to English I have been true to their use of
the language, thus both ways of talking about the police officers will appear in the quotes. I have
deliberately chosen to let the quotes take up much of the analysis since I wanted their own voices to be
visible and leading instead of my interpretations. Thus, my interpretations in this part of the thesis
serve more as comments to what they were telling me.
Life in the community
'Life in the community' refers to what the participants tell about their every day life in the community
before and after the pacification and how they perceive the change that this has brought. In this
initiating section all of the other themes will occur. However, these will only be touched upon and
then be developed as themes in their own right in later sections. Thus, this section serves both as an
introduction and as the first step in a narrowing-down analysis.
My first question to the participants was always "Tell me about your community and your life here."
The quote below shows a typical answer to this question and a way of describing the community and
life there that is recurring in all of the interviews:
Maria Luísa: ...this is a nice community, like....there is a nice feeling among us neighbours....I
cannot say that there are any bad things.....well, there are always some bad things, right? Those
misunderstandings...but that always happens.../...aqui é uma comunidade bom assim....tem uma boa
convivência com o vizinho, tem nada de declarar assim de ruim....sempre tem, né? ....aqueles
desentendimentos mas sempre passa....
The community is proudly described as a nice place, with a good atmosphere among the neighbours.
Many of the participants also describe it as a place with a history and where generations of their family
have lived before. This girl's statement that there are no or few bad things is common in other
interviews. However, she hints at another reality although not out rightly spoken but rather hidden
behind the more neutral words "those misunderstandings/aqueles desentendimentos". In fact, this girl
uses all kinds of words to describe the situation, the conflict between the police and the drug factions,
in quite an indistinct way, such as: "...all got confused/teve uma confusão" and "...that
misunderstanding with UPP/aquele desentendimento com a UPP...". This is visible in many
interviews, especially the use of the word "confusion/confusão".
Thus, the interviews typically start with telling me how tranquil and nice the community is. In fact,
there is not one interview in which the word "tranquil/tranqüila" is not used, initially, to describe the
16
community. However, rather quickly a more nuanced image emerges, as this excerpt from an
interview with two young men, Fabião, 17 years old and Leonardo, 20 years old, shows:
Fabião: It's a tranquil community...yeah, it's more or less what you see now, like.....very tranquil (...)
there's no problem....like in other communities, like....it's very peaceful.../É uma comunidade
tranqüila...porra, é basicamente o que você ta vendo assim...bem tranqüilo (...) não tem
problema....muito problema igual ás outras comunidades assim....é bem pacifico...
Leonardo: ...it's where we grew up....it's different from other communities. I have always found it
tranquil.../....é uma comunidade que a gente também cresceu aqui dentro. É diferente das outras
comunidades, sempre achei tranqüila...
(...)
Me: Mhm. Tell me more about that...about life here before the UPP./Mhm. Me falem mais sobre isso,
sobre a vida aqui antes da UPP.
Fabião: ...life here before the UPP...before they came it was more or less like it is now that they are
here....it has always been tranquil....there was never any problem, like.../...a vida antes, da UPP, da
chegada da UPP aqui era basicamente como é agora com a chegada da UPP...sempre foi
tranqüila...nunca teve nenhum problema assim...
Leonardo: Right, no...the only problem here....when the UPP wasn't here....there was the risk....of a
bullet, like....when we were going to school we were afraid..../É...não....o único problema
aqui,...quando não tinha UPP...tinha risco de....de bala assim.....a gente tava subindo à escola a
gente tinha medo.
Fabião: ....a stray bullet./...a bala perdida
The participants are repeating the word "tranquil/tranqüila". Nonetheless, it becomes clear that
'tranquillity' for them has included stray bullets and shootings on their way to school, something that is
most often not considered as tranquillity. However, these youths compare their community to other
communities that have had a worse situation according to them:
Leonardo: So...there are other communities that are much more violent....the ones that are like....it's a
totally different story....we were already very tranquil./Então...aqui tem comunidades muito mais
violentos que essas que é assim....já é uma historia diferente...a gente já foi bem tranqüilo.
Taís: ... this community always...always had that tranquillity because there wasn't always.....like in
other communities....that the police came every day and all the time...(..) and now it's even more
tranquil....it's like noone lives here....there is this silence.....it's very tranquil.../...a comunidade
sempre...sempre teve aquele tranqüilidade porque não tinha toda vez, como que tinha em outros
morros da policia subir todo dia, toda hora...(...)...e agora ficou mais tranqüilo ainda..parece que
não tem ninguém que mora aqui...é um silencio...é muito...
Thus, the meaning of the word 'tranquil' for these youths must be seen in the light of comparison with
other low-income Rio de Janeiro communities that they consider as worse. Hence, their intentionality,
that is, how they with their particular experiences and mental orientation (Willig, 2008) perceive life in
the community, is in comparison with other similar but worse settings. In this specific context,
tranquillity as absence of fear is something most of these youths might have never experienced since
they have been born and raised inside the community or came there as very young. Consequently, the
concept of tranquillity for them included shootings, weapons, drug abuse and so on. However, seen in
the light of worse communities, theirs is, and has always been, tranquil and this seems to be their way
of making meaning and sense of their experiences (Chapman & Smith, 2002, p. 126; Willig, 2008).
However, some participants themselves pinpoint the ambiguity in the question of whether or not the
community was tranquil:
Taís: Before...(...) the fear of stray bullets, of shootings and those things....before we didn't have....we
didn't have tranquillity but at the same time we did.....because we never knew, right? what to
expect.....feeling tranquil....I feel much more tranquil now because I know that there is not going go
be shootings in the community. /Antes, não com medo, vamos botar que com medo de bala perdida,
de tiroteio e essas coisas, antes a gente não tinha...tinha tranqüilidade mas não tinha ao mesmo
tempo...que a gente nunca sabe, né, o que a gente vai encontrar, mas...tranqüilidade que eu passo,
agora eu passo bem mais porque eu sei que não vai ter um tiroteio na comunidade.
17
Another girl, Marta, also expresses this ambiguity saying first: "But apart from that [the fear of
gunfire]....it was tranquil./ Mas fora isso [medo de tiroteio]...mas tava tranqüilo.", but as the interview
proceeds, she says: "Tranquillity here we did not have.../tranqüilidade aqui a gente não tinha". The
sensation I got during the interviews was that the participants were a bit careful in their accounts. They
told me about how nice the community was but in between they said things that totally contrasted this
image. One reason for this might be the fear of talking to anyone about how life under the drug lords'
rule was. This is how one participant says when asked about how he feels about the change after the
UPP:
Nelson: Relieved...before I was afraid....of saying anything about them...(...) we feel more at ease
now...we can say whatever we want...talk to anyone.../Aliviado....antes eu tinha medo...de falar
qualquer coisa sobre eles...(...) a gente agora tá mais tranqüila....pode falar o que quiser...conversar
tudo o mundo.
(...)
...before...if you started talking to a police officer...they [the traffickers] would say you were a snitch
revealing information about the trafficking to the police, then....you would risk dying (...) they could
kill you in front of everyone in the sports camp...those kinds of things...now it's not like that...you can
talk...but not much because we still don't trust...but, yes....you can say good morning, good evening,
talk [to the police officers]....in front of them...they can see that it's not what they think.../...Que
antigamente...se...foi o que eu falei...se eu (...) começasse a falar assim com um policial...eles [os
bandidos] falavam que você era X9...aí tinha que (...) passando informação do trafico pra policia,
aí...tu correr risco de morrer (...) pegar arma em frente de todo o mundo ali na quadra....essas coisas
assim....hoje em dia não...hoje em dia você pode falar...não muito que a gente ainda desconfia...mas
sim...pode falar bom dia, boa tarde, conversar [com os policiais]...na frente deles...podem ver que
não tem nada a ver...que não é aquilo que eles pensam...
Nelson's statement shows that, after the installation of the UPP, the fear of talking to the police
officers, or about the situation in general, is slowly growing smaller, as people are feeling safer but it
is still an issue that causes feelings of insecurity. Thus, this might be a reason for the youths to be
careful in their accounts for a start. This might also be a reason for using the type of circumlocutions
described above that the youths use when they mention the conflict between the police and the drug
lords. The residents have not been able to talk freely about the state in the community and it is only
recently that this has started to change. However, I experienced that the more the interviews proceeded
the clearer they became in their accounts. Thus, one might also assume that the youths confided more
in me as the interview went on and they felt more and more secure in the situation.
However, a third option to why the community is commonly described as so tranquil in the beginning
of the interviews is that these youths truly believe that it is and was tranquil, since their perception of
tranquillity is always related to more violent communities. Thus, I interpret it as a normalization
process when living in an extremely violent situation and not really knowing of another reality and the
only comparison being other communities in a worse situation. It is important to keep in mind that
these youths, as they told me, have been more or less isolated in their community due to the
difficulties to walk freely inside the community as well as in and out of the community because of the
risk of violent and often deadly confrontations between the police force and the drug lords and because
of the traffickers walking around armed and often high on drugs. In the entrance of the community
there was the boca, the 'mouth', the place where the traffickers were posted, often high on drugs, and
with loaded guns watching over the entrance and anyone entering or leaving. This made it unsafe for
the residents to walk in and out freely but also for people outside the community to visit, thereof the
physical isolation from the surrounding community. The way of having had to normalize a violent
environment is directly visible in the material as is the awareness among the participants about this, as
this quote shows:
18
Fabião: If we go to there [to a neighbouring community] to visit a friend...you feel a bit insecure
because we are no longer used to armed traffickers (...) that almost stopped...thank God....coming and
seeing drug users in the 'boca' smoking...using drugs...passing and feeling that smell of a joint...and
they were armed (...) we stopped seeing those things, that bad habit...but it's when we go to other
communities...it's like a chock (...) they have UPP and still they have armed traffickers. /Se a gente ir
lá [ a uma comunidade vizinha] visitar amigo...tu fica meio inseguro porque a gente não tá mais
acostumada com o traficante armado (...) É isso que...que..que meio que acabou...graças a Deus...a
gente já tava com a arma de todo tipo...chegar e encontrar usuário ali na boca do fumo usando
drogas...passar e sentir o cheiro da maconha, e eles estavam armados...tu tava passando (...) a gente
meio que..a gente acabou de ver-se com isso, com esse mal habito....mas é quando a gente vai em
outra comunidade..já...é como um choque..mesmo que eu tô morando na comunidade.
Maria Luísa expresses it like this:
Maria Luísa: ...before and after [the UPP]...it is still the same thing, but now it’s that thing that is
softer...let’s say...yeah...let’s say softer....because before....if you came here...how it was before you
would not have liked....no one would not even have liked to put their foot here....even if I live here....I
will not say that I got used to it....but if I went outside....if I didn't have a choice, then you have to get
used to it, don't you? (...) that's how it was, I...ended up becoming used to it./ Antes e
agora....continua a mesma coisa, mas é aquela coisa mais suave....vamos dizer....é....vamos botar
suave...porque antigamente, se você viesse aqui...como era antigamente você não ia
gostar....ninguém ia nem querer parar aqui...por mais que eu moro aqui....eu não vou dizer que eu
me acostumei...mas se eu saía...se eu não tinha outra escolha, então a gente tem de se acostumar,
né?
Marta, the girl whose brother got shot by the police mentions the same thing but in a slightly different
way. As Willig (2008) puts it, there exists a gap between a situation and how people experience it,
thus two different people with different intentionality might experience it differently. Since Marta had
relatives in the drug cartel her intentionality and how she experiences the change (Willig, 2008), is a
bit different to Maria Luísa and Fabião above. Marta says:
Marta: It's good (living in the community), right? 'cause I'm even used to it./ É bom, né? que já
estou até acostumada.
(...)
Tranquillity here we did not have...but I thought it was better because I was used to it since I was
little...after the installation of the UPP I think that it is bad because I never liked...like, it's not like, I
never liked the police....but after my brother died, I started to dislike them...but...I don't have much to
say./ Hm, tranqüilidade aqui a gente não tinha, mas eu achava melhor porque eu já era acostumada
desde pequeno, depois da chegada da UPP, eu achei ruim porque eu nunca gostei de...tipo, não é
assim que, nunca gostei de policia, mas depois de que o meu irmão morreu, eu passei a não
gostar....mas....não tenho muito que falar.
For Marta, she says, it was better before the 'pacification' even if they did not have tranquillity,
because she was used to it. Here, being used to it, is a good thing. However, as I will show further on,
her perception is more nuanced than this and she shows very ambiguous feelings towards if it was
better before or after the pacification.
When talking about how it is in the community after the installation of the UPP many say that it is
practically the same but without arms and that the drug dealing still exists but that it is hidden.
Marta:...but it's almost the same thing because the bandits continue acting as before, only that they
don't walk around armed, but apart from that..../ mas tá quase a mesma coisa porque o bandido
continua agindo do mesmo jeito, só não andam armado, mas fora isso....
Fabião: It's more or less like before, but without shootings./ Basicamente como era antigamente mas
sem tiroteio.
Leonardo: And without visible drug dealing./E sem trafico exposto.
However, feelings of great relief are often expressed and some say that there is a big difference before
and after the installation of the UPP:
19
Taís: It's a lot better....after they came, for me, when that [shootings] happened it was a terrible fear
(...) once we were playing there in front of the sports field, then the caveirão [the skull], that is the
police vehicle came (...) then we had to take away all the kids from the sports field to run home, and
then the shooting started (...)/ E melhorou bastante...depois que entrou, pra mim, quando acontecia
isso era um medo terrível (...) tem uma vez que a gente tava brincando lá na frente perto do (campo
desportivo), aí o caveirão que é o carro dos polícias...(...)..subiu..(..) aí a gente teve que tirar as
crianças todas do campo desportivo pra poder correr pra casa, aí começou o tiro.(...)
Me: And how was that for you? Before the UPP?/ E como era isso pra você como mãe? Antes da
UPP?
Taís: It was horrible, that we couldn't let our children play on the street, right? Afraid of a stray bullet
(...) but it's much better, we can let the children go out, play as they want. / Era horrível, que a gente
nem podia deixar os filhos brincar na rua, né? Com medo da bala perdida (...) mas ta bem melhor, a
gente pode deixar as crianças sair, brincar a vontade.
Me: And how is that for you, how do you feel?/ E como é isso pra você, como se sente?
Taís: Ah...it's very good (...) I'm very happy knowing that the children don't have to be locked up
inside the house and wanting to play but we were locking them up inside because of stray bullets./
Ah...é muito bom (...) Muito feliz também por saber que as crianças não podem ficar trancadas
dentro de casa, querendo brincar, e a gente trancando eles por causa de bala perdida.
Also, some of the participants mention the freedom and the possibility to invite people to the
community without feeling uneasy as a result of the installation of the UPP police unit:
Leonardo: ...what's good now is that we can open the doors so that people can come here...so that
they can enter here.../ ...o bom de agora é que a gente pode abrir pra as pessoas entrar..entrarem..
Fabião: ...and get to know our world.../ ...e conhecer o nosso mundo
Leonardo: ...and see that here it's not just all that...that they show in the media (...) what people from
outside say (...) / ...é, e ver que aqui não é aquilo tudo que, que mostram na mídia (...) que a pessoa
de fora fala (...)Me: And how do you feel, being able to do that?/ É como se sente então, poder fazer isso?
Leonardo: Ah...we feel good.../ Aí, a gente se sente bem, pó.
Fabião: ...we feel good....that we can be part of the society...and not....before we were excluded...but
now. like...now we have this freedom to exchange...cultures, information with other people...they
come here to get to know...to see the real situation...that it's not all that that you see in the media, just
shootings, sadness and misery./ ....se sente bem...fazendo parte agora da sociedade....não
que....antigamente a gente era excluído..mas agora, assim, agora já tem essa liberdade de poder
trocar de....de cultura, de informação com outras pessoas, vem aqui conhecer...ver a real situação,
que não é aquilo que passa na mídia, só tiroteio, tristeza e miséria.
These two boys bring forth an important aspect, the stigmatization that the residents of the
communities have had to suffer from the outside world, which they strongly object to. Thus, several
things are mentioned that the youths find have improved after the installation of the UPP unit: that the
drug dealers are no longer armed, that the shootings and the risk of stray bullets have ended, the
possibility to walk around freely and let the children play outside, the activities and celebrations that
the UPP arrange; their work with children; when they talk to the youths in a personal manner; the
construction work that is being done; the entrance of new projects concerning for example health and
education, that you can count on the police to help you; the female police officers' influence on the
police work, that the police officers protect you from rivalling gang members as well as improved civil
rights and awareness of their rights as citizens. These themes will be further developed under the
heading Feeling safe.
However, the youths also mention a lot of things about the UPP that create discontent and insecurity,
such as: abuse of power; verbal and physical aggressiveness, particularly in some of the male police
officers; disrespect of your rights as a citizen; lack of education and politeness; cowardice in dealing
with the drug dealers; that they walk around with the guns in their hands; that they fire the arms to
often and unnecessarily when there are conflicts with the residents, irritation because of the regulation
of their social life and police interventions when throwing parties and sexual harassments towards
20
girls. As with the positive aspects these negative accounts are only mentioned here but will be further
developed in the section named Feeling unsafe.
As mentioned before when discussing Marta, whose brother got shot by the BOPE, the level of
contentment with the installation of the UPP unit seems to vary depending on if you have family
members in the drug faction. However, even though she is more sceptical towards the police than the
other interviewees, she acknowledges an improvement after the installation of the UPP:
Marta: What to say....in the days with the bandits here it was bad because...we lived with shootings,
the residents had to run home, it was shootings everywhere, that was bad, that part. (...) but apart
from that it was tranquil./ Aí gente, o dia com bandido aqui era ruim por causa que....vivia tendo
troca de tiro, o morador tinha que correr pra casa, era tiro pra todo quanto é lado, aí era ruim, por
essa parte.
Me: And how was it for you, before the UPP, in your life?/ E como era isso pra você, antes da
UPP..na sua vida?
Marta: Well, for me, it wasn't very good, I cannot complain on the bandits but still it wasn't very
good because...my brother was a bandit...BOPE killed him, they threw him into the forest, so like, for
the relatives of the traffickers it's not good./ Assim, para mi não era muito bom. não tenho que
reclamar dos bandidos mas também não era muito bom porque, meu irmão também já foi bandido, o
BOPE mataram ele, jogaram ele no mato, aí, assim, pra quem tem parente na boca não é bom....
It seems that, for her, it is very double. On the one hand she says that it was worse before for relatives
of the drug traffickers because of the risk of them getting killed, but also it was easier since they knew
the traffickers. However, the new situation with the UPP, seems to put her in a loyalty conflict (this
will be further discussed in the next section) and due to the fact that her brother got killed by the police
officers, even if it was by BOPE police officers and not the UPP unit, this makes it more difficult to
deal with the 'pacification'.
To summarize this part, first of all, these youths express an incredible pride in being from this
community, and in living there. This initiating section points at several important aspects that will be
further developed in the coming sections. The participants describe the community as tranquil, both
before and after the 'pacification', however this is in comparison with other and worse communities.
They show mixed feelings about the situation after the installation of the UPP. On the one hand, many
say that it is like before only without visible drug dealing and without the shooting. On the other hand,
they tell of feelings of great relief and that there has been an improvement in terms of safety and
improved living conditions. However, they also experience discomfort with the presence of the UPP
police officers in terms of police aggression and abuse of power. Finally, the level of contentment with
the 'pacification' and the feelings towards it is also depending on if you have relatives involved in the
drug faction. This leads us to the next theme, Ambiguity.
Ambiguity
As seen above, in all of the interviews, ambiguity about whether or not the UPP is a good thing and
ambiguity towards whether or not you can feel safe with the police, is a very prominent feature in this
study. Furthermore, the participants show ambiguous feelings towards the drug lords in terms of how
they are ought to be seen, as friends or enemy, as good or bad, and ultimately there is the ambiguity
towards who is to prefer, the police officers or the drug dealers. So, even though the residents do not
have to be scared of the traffickers or sudden police interventions and shootings between the police
and the drug dealers in the same way as before, feeling safe with the police officers and the
'pacification' is in no way a matter of course:
21
Maria Luísa:...I will not say that I don't like the police....it's always good to have them in the
beginning, like....you feel safer...right? The residents...there are residents that feel safer with the
police being present here...(...) What I think? [about the police] I...they are a bit...no, not a bit....they
are corrupt, right? Let's say it like this...but....they never did me any harm....nor to anyone in my
family....or my friends...my closest friends...they never did any harm...for me...they're nothing...I
cannot say that they are a bad thing, do you understand? ...it's more or less good things that
they....you know, right? (...) ...yeah, that's how it is...let us not say that they are a bad thing....a
negative and bad thing...because there are a lot of good things that they...that they promote for us here
in the community...activities...well...a lot of things / eu não vou dizer que eu não gosto de policias....é
sempre bom no inicio ter, assim, se sente mais seguro...né? Ao morador....tem morador que....tem
moradores que se sentem mais seguros com a presencia da polícia...(...) O que eu acho? [da polícia]
Eu..são um pouco...nao vamos dizer um pouco, eles são corruptos, né? Vamos dizer
assim...mas...nunca me fizeram mal...nunca fizeram mal pra ninguém da minha família....assim os
meus amigos...próximos amigos... nunca fizeram mal...para mi...não são nada, não venha de mim
dizer que eles são coisa ruim, entendeu?...mais ou menos são coisas boas que eles....conhece, né?
(...) é assim, não vamos dizer que ela é uma coisa ruim....negativo ruim....porque tem muitas coisas
boas que eles..que eles promovem pra a gente aqui da comunidade, atividades...aí... muitas coisas.
First, this girl points to an important fact, if the police have never done anything to you, your family or
your friends it makes it easier to be more positive towards them. This underlines the discussion in the
previous section on the fact that youths with family members involved in the drug faction tend to be
more cautious towards the police and the installation of the UPP. Secondly, she says that the UPP unit
has brought a lot of good things, even though she is ambivalent in how to feel about the police
officers. Also, as discussed before, many youths say that it is almost the same after the installation of
the UPP as before, only that there are neither arms nor shooting anymore. Hence, some youths show
irritation with the police in terms of the purpose with the UPP. They seem to believe that the purpose
is to put an end to the drug trafficking even if the official purpose is first and foremost to get the
streets free of arms (see introduction). Since the drug dealing still exists they are discontent with the
police unit and how the 'pacification' has been promoted. They say that the police is showing a facade
outwards of having expulsed the trafficking from the communities whilst everyone living there knows
that this is not so:
Fabião: Well, the drug dealing still exists, in all of the pacified communities, only not visible like
before...with guns...walking around in the community (...) To say that a particular community doesn't
have trafficking is a lie,..everywhere there is still trafficking (...)./ Pó, o trafico ainda tem, na toda
comunidade que é pacificada, mas não exposto como antigamente...com...com arma...com...andando
lá na comunidade (...) Dizer que uma comunidade especifica não tem isso é mentira, que toda
comunidade ainda tem o trafico.
Leonardo: ....UPP was like putting on a make-up (...) / ...a UPP foi praticamente eles...maquiar..(...)
Fabião: ....you can stay here dealing....we [the police unit] will stay here to show the people what we
are doing, that there is no trafficking and so on, but the one living in the community knows that it still
exists./ vocês vão, vão ficar aqui vendendo, a gente [a unidade de políciais]vamos ficar aqui
mostrando pra a pessoa o que a gente faz, que não tem trafico, e isso e aquilo, mas quem mora na
comunidade sabe que tem ainda.
Thus, there seem to exist a certain confusion around the purpose of the UPP and thus an irritation
towards the UPP that they believe have not fulfilled this purpose and that they believe are not honest
in the image they project to the outside. Furthermore, whether or not the participants are aware of the
actual official purpose with UPP many of the youths in this study believe that the purpose should be to
put an end to the trafficking and the drug abuse for good and that the police officers are to coward
when dealing with the drug dealers:
Fabião: Well, I think that ....if they install UPP I think that they should really....since UPP is like
putting on a make-up or hide the drug dealing....and since the real objective with the UPP is to put an
end to the trafficking I think that they should come here and put an end to it, not only put on a makeup (...) I think that they should fulfil that goal./ Bom, eu acho que....que se botou a UPP eu acho que
22
eles têm que realmente....já que a UPP é uma forma de maquiar ou esconder o trafico...já que na
verdade o objetivo da UPP é acabar com o trafico acho que eles têm que entrar e acabar, não
maquiar (...) cumprir assim esse objetivo, essa meta.
Leonardo: ...that way they can get closer to the residents....and make them trust in them....it's just
that....to tell the truth it seems that they don't get along very well with the residents./ ...que desse jeito
eles podem se aproximar mais do morador....e fazer o morador confiar nele...só que eles,...na
verdade parece que não ligam muito com o morador (...)
Leonardo: ...and when they interrogate someone it is only residents [and not the traffickers] (...) And
they know who is a resident and who isn't, it's only to be able to say that they're doing their job./....e
quando é pra interrogar só é o morador [e não os traficantes] (...) E sabem quem é morador, só pra
falar que estão fazendo o trabalho.
Fabião: It's rare that they stop a drug dealer to search him...because they know who he is...but the
resident coming from a party...or sitting in the community (...) talking to friends and they come
aggressively...they question the resident...and pressure him, to make him nervous and so on./ É
raro...parar um traficante e revistar realmente aquele traficante....porque ele sabe quem é...mas o
morador (...) sempre o morador que ta subindo, de festa ou...ta sentado na comunidade (...) ta
conversando com amigos e chega de forma agressiva...interroga o morador...faz o....bota aquela
pressão de o morador ficar nervoso assim e tal.
Maria Luísa expresses a similar opinion:
Maria Luísa: The police should walk around more in the community, and be more in the places
where...they see that the boys [the drug dealers] are always hanging all day long (...) they [should do
this] much, much more than they do (...) even in the night....'cause sometimes the police don't walk
around in the community during the night because they know that there are still boys from the
movement here, right? But they shouldn't stop walking around. /Que a polícia deveria andar mais
por essa comunidade, é...ficar mais em lugares onde ela...eles vêem...onde esses policiais vêem que
esses mesmos meninos [os traficantes] ficam sempre todo o dia (...) Andar lá mais...percorrendo
mais pela comunidade, muito mais, mais do que eles fazem, muito mais, muito mais (...) Mesmo assim
de noite...que as vezes de noite os policias não andam pela comunidade por que eles sabem que
ainda existem meninos ainda do movimento aqui, entendeu? Mas eles não deixem de andar.
Moving on to the drug dealers and the feelings towards them, some of the youths and especially the
girl, Marta, with family in the drug faction, show some ambiguity in whom to prefer, the drug dealers
or the police officers. There exists a loyalty conflict. Marta puts it like this when asked how this
situation is for her:
Marta: It's very difficult, right? not knowing who you prefer...you can't like either of them because
then you will have trouble with the other/ Muito difícil, né? não saber quem você prefere, você não
pode gostar de um porque se não você apanha do outro.
Marta expresses a fear of having troubles with one part if you side with the other. This might be more
likely to happen if you have relatives in the movement, as Marta does. Also, she describes the violent
behaviour of the drug dealers, but she says that it was good, if you didn't fuck with them.
Marta: Before (the UPP) there wasn't this thing with prohibition [of dances and entertainment] but
also if you hesitated in the community the bandits would beat you....even though....the UPP is here
they continue the beating....but it used to be worse....they picked people to fight against each other,
they cut the girls' hair, but I don't know, it was good...for those who didn't fuck with them./ Antes não
tinha isso de proibir não, mas também se vacilasse no morro, os bandidos batia, mesmo assim, eles
continua batendo com a UPP, mas eles batia pior, botava os outros pra brigar, cortava o cabelo das
meninas, mas sei la gente, era bom, pra quem não aprontava.
María Luísa gives voice to the same thing, although in a slightly different way:
Maria Luísa:...I have friends who don't go near [the police officers]...who don't like to go near 'cause
sometimes their dad is from the movement [the drug faction] or their mum is married or lives with
someone from the movement, they don't go near just to avoid confusion./ tenho amigas minhas que
não chegam perto, que não gostam de chegar perto [dos policiais] porque as vezes o pai é do
movimento o a mãe é do, é casado ou mora com alguém do movimento, não chega perto só pra evitar
confusão. Mas, é assim, eu não vejo nada de ruim, não.
23
An interesting aspect is that in all of the interviews, respect and disrespect is a recurrent theme when
talking about both the police and the drug lords:
Bruno: For me...I see it like this...it's their job, as long as they don't disrespect me I'm cool...it's their
job, I respect that...if they don't show me respect I will have to make a move.../ Pra mim, eu o vejo
assim, é o trabalho deles, portanto que eles não me faltem em respeito pra mim ta tranqüilo. É o
trabalho deles, eu respeito isso, se eles me faltarem com respeito serei obrigada a tomar medidas.
Me: ...how do you think that the police should work?
Marta: Ah, just with respect for the residents (...) because they don't have that./ Ah, com respeito aos
moradores, só (...) que eles não tem.
Also, there exists an idea about the importance of mutual respect:
Taís: (...) we respect them [the police officers]...they will respect us (...) They [the police officers]
respect us a lot because there are some communities that we can see on TV and where they beat the
residents...here, thank God, that doesn't happen./ (...) se a gente respeita eles [os policiais], eles
respeitam a gente. (...) Eles [the police officers] respeitam muito porque tem alguns morros que a
gente vê na televisão que eles batem os moradores. aqui graças a Deus, não acontece nada disso.
Here, Taís says that the police are very respectful, but as with describing the community as tranquil,
she does this in comparison with much worse abuse by police officers that occurs in other
communities with UPP units that she knows of. However, many times the drug lords are described as
respectful, and even more respectful, than the police:
Maria Luísa:..but they respect us a lot, and we always respected them./ Mas eles respeitam muito a
gente, e a gente sempre respeitou.
Maria Luisa:...I don't talk a lot with them [the traffickers]...but, like...good day, good evening....it's
always....a good education should always come first....they always answer...they respect you, they
respect very much the residents here./ ...eu não falo assim com eles...mas, assim...um boa tarde...um
boa noite...sempre a....a educação sempre no primeiro lugar...eles sempre respondem, te respeitam,
respeitam muito os moradores aqui.
This is despite the fact that the youths tell me that under their ruling in the community people were
physically assaulted and even executed in front of the residents if they did not obey the rules of the
drug dealers. On the contrary, even if the police in some parts are mentioned in terms of being
respectful, they are as many times if not more, mentioned as disrespectful towards the residents.
To summarize this section, feelings of ambiguity are omnipresent. First of all, there exist uncertainty
about what the purpose of the UPP really is and consequently ambiguity towards how to feel about
how the police have succeeded in completing this goal. Also, the participants show ambiguous
feelings towards both the police officers and the drug dealers. Both groups are, in some sense, seen as
both protectors and aggressors, but in different ways, and this is seen in how the participants talk about
them. This leads us into the next theme, Feeling unsafe.
Feeling unsafe
As seen in the previous section the participants are ambiguous in their feelings towards the drug
dealers. Before the 'pacification' they ruled the community and they were at the same time 'protecting'
the residents and terrorizing them. One boy, when asked what made him feel safe in the past, said
frankly:
Nelson: Nothing./ Nada.
Me: Nothing. Tell me more about that./ Nada. Me fale mais sobre isso.
Nelson: They [the traffickers] say....that they ensured our safety but....that wasn't safety (...)
sometimes they killed people in front of the residents in the sports court (...) that's not safety/
24
Dizem...eles que faziam a nossa segurança mas....não faziam segurança (...) matavam as vezes
pessoas na frente dos moradores ali na quadra (...) Isso não é segurança.
However, as mentioned before, there is a difference in how the youths talk about the police officers'
disrespect and what may be seen as the drug dealers' disrespect. In the same way there is a difference
in how the participants told me about the police officers' abuse of power and what might be seen as the
drug dealers abuse of power. In fact they do not speak about the violence that the drug dealers
exercised as abuse of power or disrespect, even if some things that they tell of are truly violent, as will
be seen in the quotes below. However, if they do not speak about the drug dealers' violence in terms of
abuse of power, they do use words like injustice, or they say that it was difficult, but never that it was
abuse of power:
Nelson:...problems that the police normally solve....you couldn't call the police....you had to call
them [the drug dealers]...like domestic violence, those things....you had to call them 'cause they
wanted to solve it...(...) and every other problem...you had to talk to them (...) robbery...if someone in
the community robbed someone...normally you call the police, right? to solve it...no...here you had to
call them....they tried to find out who it was....and if they found out....or they beat him or they killed
him./ ...problemas que normalmente resolverem a policia...não tinha que chamar a policia...não
tinha que chamar a policia, tinha que chamar eles [os traficantes]...briga com mulher, essas coisas
assim...tinha que chamar eles, que eles quer resolver (...) qualquer outro problema também....tudo
tinha que falar com eles (...) roubo...se alguém roubasse na comunidade... normalmente a gente tem
que chamar, né?....a policia pra resolver...não...aqui tu tinha que chamar eles...eles tentar descobrir
quem era...e se eles descobrissem...ou eles batiam ou então eles matavam.
Me: And how was that for you?/ E isso...como era isso pra você?
Nelson: An injustice....if there are prisons and laws...it's in order to arrest...if you rob you get
arrested...we saw this...we couldn't call the police (...) they [the drug dealers] made their own justice,
so to say...but that's not justice, right? It's injustice...beat someone....take someone's life...they thought
that they owned us....that they were the owners of the community/Uma injustiça....que...se tem
cadeia, se tem lei...é pra prender...se roubar é pra prender..a gente viu aquilo...não podia chamar a
policia...aí falava com eles [os traficantes]...eles faziam a justiça deles, entre aspas...aquilo que não
era justiça, né?...é injustiça....bater...tirar a vida de alguém....achavam que são donos das pessoas...o
dono do morro...
The participants describe the different types of violent behaviour of the drug dealers and of feeling
uneasy in these situations.
Bruno: Many times you passed by with your child and there was this guy [a drug dealer] there using
drugs, carrying a gun, screaming, talking bullshit, then it was very difficult./ muitas das vezes você
estava passando com o seu filho e o cara [um traficante] 'tava lá usando drogas, portando uma
arma, gritando, falando besteiras, então era bem difícil.
Maria Luísa:...they had like...how to say it....a brothel...I don't know...it wasn't a brothel...but older
women went there....younger women to prostitute themselves with them there...it was a bad thing
because the resident doesn't like to see that. /...eles faziam tipo, o que vamos dizer, puteiro, não sei,
não era um puteiro, mas iam mulheres assim mais velhas, mais novas que tipo que se prostituíram,
que se prostituíram com eles lá. Que ficava uma coisa chata né porque o morador não gosta de ver
isso.
Part of the explanation to the different vocabulary when talking about the violence used by the police
and the violence used by the drug dealers might be that the youths share an understanding with the
drug dealers. Hence, their intentionality and how they perceive the drug dealers (Willig, 2008) is
different from someone from outside the community. Thus, the drug lords' violent behaviour in some
ways seems to be more understandable for the participants than the police officer's violence and, even
in a distorted way, the drug lords offered some kind of protection when the civil society failed them.
Also, the drug dealers are referred to both as " the bandits/os bandidos" or "the traffickers/os
traficantes" and as "the boys/os meninos" or "the kids/as crianças" The two former refer to the
criminal role that they have while the two latter are clearly pointing to the fact that many of them are
25
young boys or even considered as children, thus there is a recognition of their role as criminals as well
as a familiarity and a recognition of them as boys. Most of the participants and the drug dealers grew
up in the same community and under the same conditions and they are often even in the same age.
Some of them also have family and friends among the drug dealers. However, with the police officers
there were no familiarity and they were adults and professionals with the duty to protect the citizens
from violence, thus they do not have any excuse to behave abusively. Hence, I argue that it is probable
that these youths did not consider the drug dealers as carriers of power in the same way as the police
officers but rather that they became drug dealers due to lack of power. Thus, they have no power to
abuse in the first place. However, it is not black or white, the participants do also see the abuse of the
power that the drug dealers entitled to themselves, even if they do not talk about it in the same way as
when they talk about the police officers. As Bruno says:
Bruno: For me it was a bit complicated, because I, on the one hand....I try to see the two sides of the
coin....that a lot of times the guy was a trafficker due to lack of opportunity (...) and today in some
ways, that opportunity came....but it's like this...it's very complicated here...for the guy that already
has that history that was difficult for him...now he will not be able to sort himself out, like....let's say,
from one day to another....the big bad guy will not be a big good guy...it happens, sometimes it
happens...but it's very difficult to work with the mind of someone like that../ Pra mim era meio
complicada, que eu por um lado, eu tento de ver as duas partes da moeda, que muitas das vezes o
cara era traficante por falta de oportunidade (...) E hoje em dia essa oportunidade tal forma chegou,
mas é assim, ta bem complicada aqui, pelo cara viver já uma historia que foi difícil para ele, hoje em
dia ele não vai conseguir se concertar assim....entre aspas, de um dia pra o outro, ele não vai virar o
grande cara mal....pra virar o grande cara bom, acontece, as vezes acontece, mas é muito difícil
trabalhar a mente de uma pessoa assim....
In Bruno's eyes, the police officers do not have "reasons" like the drug dealers to behave badly. On the
contrary, he believes that they form part of an authority that are supposed to look after its citizens:
Bruno:...what they could do to have better relations with the community (...) it would be very good if
they took part more in life here in the community...not only ensuring our safety, as they say, but that
they could participate more in courses that we have here, in the projects that we have in the
community...it would be a good thing for their work and also to stop some of that abuse of power that
they often use...because most of the times...some police officers...they come and like 'I'm the
authority here'...but I learned that discussion...he is not an authority, he is a public servant in this
community, he's here to ensure the community's safety...not to treat the community like...a
doormat....yeah, let's say like a doormat....not to treat the resident like a doormat....and that I think
ought to change in some ways...they could be more (....) polite and friendly in how they speak, the
way they speak....but I don't know how it could change....just that it's something that I think ought to
change./ ...o que eles pudessem fazer pra melhorar a convivência com a comunidade, seria melhor
coisa, que pó, de repente.....vou tentar de explicar melhor, seria muito bom se eles participassem
mais na vida da comunidade, não só como fazendo a segurança da gente, entre aspas, mais
participando de muitos cursos que a gente tem aqui, os projetos que a comunidade tem, seria uma
coisa boa pra o trabalho deles e também pra parar um pouco dessa coisa de abuso de poder que
muitas das vezes eles tem, porque a maioria das vezes....alguns policiais, eles chegam, ah, eu sou a
autoridade na comunidade, aí, eu aprendi essa discussão... autoridade não, ele é um servidor publico
na comunidade, ele ta ali pra fazer segurança pra a comunidade, não pra tratar a comunidade como
uma.....um capacho, vamos dizer assim...não tratar o morador como um capacho...e isso pra mim
deveria mudar um pouco de certa forma, ser mais (...) gentil no modo de falar, no jeito de falar...mas
eu não sei como isso poderia mudar...mas é uma coisa que para mim poderia mudar.
Also, one participant, Nelson, mentioned that the police authorities and the state should make efforts
to re-educate the drug lords:
Nelson:...I think that they should also.....have re-education....try to re-socialize them....try and make
them...(...) they are there [in prison] behind bars....like animals in a zoo...and...they don't have
education, they don't have anything and when they get out, what do they do? So, a project to get them
out, work and try to live a different life....but what do they do? They go back to the same place...that's
what happened....(...) few of them get out of it....very few...and...it's just one mistake after another.../
26
Eu acho que também que tinha até o....uma reeducação...tentar resocializar eles...tentar fazer que
eles....(...) ...que eles ficam lá [na prisão]...é....eles ficam lá...preso...enjaulado....como se fosse já um
animal no zoológico...e...não tem educação, não tem nada e quando saem fazem o que? Então um
projeto pra eles sair, trabalhar, fazer, tentar viver outra vida.....começaram a fazer o que? a voltar
pra o mesmo lugar....e era isso que acontecia (...) são poucos que saem...muitos poucos....e...é um
erro trás do outro que vai acontecendo nisso...
The very first thing that all the participants mentioned as making them feel unsafe, and
correspondingly as the most appreciated change that came with the UPP, is that the weapons, the
shootings and the stray bullets are gone and that you can now walk around freely in and outside of the
community. In general in the material, seeing weapons and having to pass people with weapons all the
time is a big reason for feeling unsafe. As seen in previous sections, and not surprisingly, the drug
dealers walking around with loaded guns and the boca is one example:
Nelson: They had a depository (...) they had a table...two tables and some chairs...and there they
were....ah, we didn't like to see that...some residents came close, others didn't, the decent ones
didn't...they stayed far away....they didn't even like...to pass there...it's the way home...but they didn't
like to be near...(...) armed bandits...all those things./ Armazém...tinham uma mesa...duas mesas e
umas cadeiras...e eles ficavam ali....aí, a gente não gostava muito de ficar vendo aquilo...alguns
moradores ficavam perto, outros não, os decentes não...ficavam longe...nem gostava... passava por
ali que é o caminho pra casa...mas não gostava de ficar próximo...(...) com bandidos armados...essas
coisas tudo.
Me: And how did that make you feel?/ É como você se sentiu então?
Nelson: Insecure/Inseguro
Me: Insecure/ Inseguro
Nelson: Very much/ Muito
Me: Tell me more about that./ Me fale mais sobre isso.
Nelson: That....there could be shooting at any moment....and...I didn't have the freedom to be...(in the
sports field) ...without the risk of something happening./ Que...poderia correr tiroteio em qualquer
momento...e... não tinha liberdade de poder ficar no... (campo desportivo) ...sem o risco de acontecer
alguma coisa.
Maria Luísa:..I would say also that, that entrance...that, that gate of arms disappeared...imagine,
you're passing a place (...) and from nowhere, a stray bullet, 'cause some [of the drug dealers] were
high here...if someone shot, you did not feel....I was scared sometimes, passing here with them like
that, do you understand? I think that was a very bad thing, very bad, awful really./ Daria também por
exemplo essa entrada....que saiu essa porta de armas...imagina, você tá passando num lugar (...) do
nada....dá uma bala perdida por que tem outros [dos traficantes] que ficavam embriagados aqui...um
tiro, você não se sentia...não...tinha medo as vezes de passar aqui com eles assim, desse jeito,
entendeu? Eu acho uma coisa muito chata, muito chata, muito desagradável mesmo.
Correspondingly, the police officers' weapons and them walking around the community armed was
mentioned by the youths as making them feel unsafe:
Taís:...they walk around a lot with their arms in the hand, firearms (...) I think that is very
wrong...very wrong, but apart from that they walk, talk, greet when they should greet, they talk, we
greet them also, it's just that...that without reason, when night falls, they start walking around like
that....I personally think...I think that that is very wrong./ ...eles andam muito com a arma na mão, de
fogo...(...) eu acho isso muito errado...muito errado, mas fora...tipo, eles andam, falam,
cumprimentam quando tem que cumprimentar, fala, a gente cumprimenta também, só é isso que, vira
e mexe...quando caia a noite assim, eles começam a andar assim, ai eu acho da minha parte, eu acho
isso super errado.
Me: Tell me more about that./ Me fale mais sobre isso.
Taís: Cause I don't know if we can pass through the dark alleys of the community...then, you don't
know who to expect...they...will point a gun at you without knowing....I think that's very wrong...just
imagine if the gun is cocked./ Porque não sei se a gente pode passar pelo, pelo um beco escuro,
tipo..as vielas da favela, escura. Ai, não sabe quem ta vindo, eles, ai vai apontar arma sem
saber....eu acho muito errado...ai vai que a arma esta destravada.
27
Thus, even if the youths often tell of a general improvement since the UPP was installed there are new
factors of threatening situations that have arisen with the new police unit since they are present in the
community at all times and thus the direct encounters with the residents are much more. If they used to
live under the watching eye of the drug traffickers they do now live under the watching eye of the
police:
Fabião: Well, sometimes you...are climbing the hill early in the morning coming back from a
party...there is this group of police officers...we feel insecure because we are still not used to
that...going back from a party in the morning and meet 5 or 6 police officers and having to pass,
like...we fear that they are gonna do something to us, right?/ Bom, as vezes você, subindo de uma
festa de madrugada na comunidade, tem um grupo de policiais, a gente se sente insegura, porque a
gente não é adaptada ainda a isso. De estar subindo de madrugada e encontrar com, com 5 ou 6
policiais, e, passar assim, a gente fica com receio de que faz alguma coisa com a gente aí, né?
As discussed in the previous section and as the title of this study suggests: "Ensuring our safety, so
they say", the ambiguity towards whether or not safety has been enhanced or if power has only
switched hands, is a common feature in the interviews.
Maria Luísa: Ah, it's very....I think it's a very annoying conflict, I don't feel safe....they [the police
unit] can, they can even bring us security, but with them I have not yet felt totally safe./ Ah...é
muito...acho que as vezes é um conflito chato, eu não me sinto segura....que eles [a polícia] podem,
eles podem até trazer segurança pra a gente, mas com eles ainda não me senti segura totalmente.
In all of the interviews the youths tell of abuse of power by the police officers. A common fear of
abusive behaviour from police officers is the patrols that the police officers do in the community to
search for illegal activities. These patrols seem to be vulnerable in a gender specific way for boys and
girls. For the girls, since they involve searching the residents. Part of the reason why there deliberately
are so many women in the UPP units is because of these patrols; only women are allowed to search
women. Still, the girls tell about sexual harassment by male officers and about fear that this will
happen to them. Alternatively, if it has not happened to them, hearing about incidents from friends and
the fear of it makes them feel unsafe:
Maria Luísa: You feel secure with the UPP here but you don't feel secure when they come to make
their patrol....you haven't done anything but then you can be a victim of some accident with
them...(...) I feel safe too but I don't feel safe when they do...when they do their patrol around the
community...when they stop people to search them...that makes me feel like....it makes me feel
uneasy (...) There was this girl from the community...she dresses just like a boy..she is lesbian...she
had to endure, like, an embarrassment (...) because..he...this man the other day felt up her body....that
created a lot of confusion also...(..) that was a very bad thing....imagine if I were her...of course I
would feel very offended../ ...se sente segura com a UPP aqui mas não se sente segura quando eles
vem fazendo a ronda deles, que pode, você pode não ter feito nada, mas ai, você pode ser vitima de
alguma acidente com eles (...) Também me sinto segura mas não me sinto segura quando eles
fazem..quando eles fazem essa ronda pela toda comunidade, que ele vai, vai parando as pessoas pra
ficar revisando, isso me da tipo um, me sinto incomodada. (...) Teve uma menina aqui na
comunidade, que ela se veste igual a um homem, ela é lésbica...ela teve que passar tipo um
constrangimento ela (...) porque o...ele...o cara outro dia passou a mão nela..da UPP....passando a
mão nela....deu muita confusão isso também (...) imagina se eu tô naquele lugar, no lugar
dela...claro que eu vou ficar muito ofendida...poxa...é isso.
Marta: What do I know....like, there are nice police officers, but I also heard people talking about
that they grabbed a girl up there [on the highest point of the community] they felt up her body.../ Ah,
sei lá gente, assim, tem os policial que são maneiro, mas também já ouvi falar que eles agarraram
uma menina lá em cima, ficaram passando a mão na garota.
However, there are indications that the boys may suffer from other types of menacing encounters with
the male police officers and in a different way than the girls:
Bruno: ah, sometimes I was with my friends (...) playing football, having a beer, and this guy comes
and puts a gun in your face, telling you to lay down (...) asking you a lot of bullshit...I feel, like,
28
defenceless....If you say something he can arrest you for disrespecting an authority, but he doesn't see
that it's he who is disrespecting you....as a resident....he doesn't respect you, he's very much abusing
his power... (...) and you cannot do anything./ Ah, que muitas das vezes estava eu com os meus
amigos ali no (campo desportivo), jogando futebol, bebendo uma cerveja, e chega um cara
apontando um fuzil na sua cara, falando pra tu encostar, disso e disso....perguntando muitas
besteiras. Eu assim me sinto sem reação, se você fala alguma coisa, ele pode prender por desacato a
autoridade, mais ele não enxerga em si mesmo que ele ta te desacatando como....com você o
morador, ele falta com respeito a você, tem um excesso de poder muito grande(...) ...e você fica sem
reação (...)
Me: And how did that make you feel? / E, como você se sentiu então?
Bruno: Ah, I feel weak, right? That I cannot do anything, the guy is pointing a gun at me...a
gun....he's pointing a gun at me...and you.....what can I do? Beat him? There's no chance...(...) ah, you
feel weak, defenceless...the guy who is there to ensure the safety of the community a lot of the times
end up assaulting in various ways./ Ah, eu me sinto fraco, né? Que eu não posso fazer nada, o cara ta
apontando pra mi uma arma, ta apontando pra mim uma arma, e você....vou fazer o que, vou bater
nele, não tem como pó (...) aí, se sente fraco, indefeso pó, o cara que era pra fazer sua proteção da
comunidade acaba muitas das vezes agredindo de formas diferentes.
Fabião:....also, when you have been to a party and you're going to the next one...the police find you
drunk (...) you meet a police officer on your way...the police officer, like...just because you're drunk
(...) he think's that he has the right to beat up anyone (...) of us and attack us (...) and make a circle...to
put one police officer and one resident...and they make...the rest of the officers form a circle and tell
the residents to stand up and put one resident and one police officer in the circle to fight...this has
happened (...) that's an insecurity that we still feel./ também quando o pessoal tem uma festa e vai pra
outra festa...o policial encontra o pessoal bêbado (...)..no meio do caminho se encontra com o
policial, o policial, assim, só porque a gente ta bêbada a gente não tem, não tá...não tá, eh....como se
diz eh...consciente do que a gente tá fazendo...aí acha que tem o direito de pegar o qualquer (...) da
gente (...) de fazer rodinha...pra botar um morador e um policial....e faz....o resto dos policiais
fazendo uma roda e pedindo os moradores de se parar e botar um policial e um morador pra ficar
brigando...que já aconteceu isso (...) Isso é insegurança....que a gente ainda tem.
A common account in the material was also that the participants experience that the police officers
many times are verbally aggressive and that they should be more polite to the residents and talk to
them in an educated manner:
Taís: (...) to ask politely...'cause there are some that are very arrogant....like, they are calm, but
sometimes it's like this arrogance that arises in them./ (...) pedir com educação...que tem uns que é
muito arrogante...tipo são tranqüilo mas tem horas, que da uma arrogância neles.
Bruno: (...) it's a very big abuse of power that some of the police officers have....to speak to you as if
you were no one./ (...) é um abuso de poder muito grande que alguns policiais têm, de certa forma
falando como se você fosse nada.
Nelson: There are those [police officers] here that we see and that say good morning, good
evening....they try to make a conversation...they try to interact with the residents...I think that they are
good people... (...) there are others that don't (...) / tem outros [policiais] aqui também que a gente vê
que dão bom dia..dão boa tarde...tenta conversar..tenta interagir com os moradores...eles são...eu
acho que eles são gente boa...(...) ...são as pessoas que prestam.....tem outros que nem fazem...eles
passam, porra....
Me: And how does that make you feel (...)?/ E como você se sente então (...)?
Nelson: (...) I don't feel either sad nor happy....but then I don't try to converse either...they say that it's
us who have to converse....so (...)....if they pass and they don't say anything I won't either....(...) there
are others that pass...and say good morning, good evening, good night....then we respond....we will
always respond to the one that talk to us....those ones we will not treat badly....those ones we will
treat politely./ (...) eu me sinto nem triste nem feliz...mas também não faço questão de
falar...que...dizem que é a gente que tem que falar...então (...) eles passam e não falam, eu também
não vou falar...(...) então não falo mas quando...eu passo por eles dou bom dia...nem sempre...porque
as vezes...tá correndo e você esquece...mas...quando eu passo eu dou bom dia, dou boa tarde, boa
noite..tem outros também que passam...dão bom dia, boa tarde, boa noite...a gente responde...os que
29
falam com a gente, a gente vai sempre falar...a gente não vai tratar mal...a gente vai tratar com
educação.
Other occasions when the participants experience feeling unsafe is when the police unit interrupt
parties in a violent way, not seldom using firearms or pepper spray:
Maria Luísa: How I felt? Horrified...imagine....you're in your home...with a lot of invited at your
party...and then, we had to run, bring the things inside, and leave our home and stop the party because
of that. It's a very bad thing, something that leaves you in chock (...) when we didn't have the
pacifying police here this never happened. The police never came shooting like this. They came
shooting yes, but at the boys [the traffickers]...but the boys...they always fired those fireworks to
know that the police was coming, so then everyone left the street./ Como eu me senti?
Horrorizada...imagina...você ta na sua casa....com muitos convidados seus naquela festa. Ai, a gente
tendo que correr, levar as coisas pra dentro, sair do seu lar, sair do seu lazer por causa de motivo
desse. Uma coisa muito ruim. Uma coisa que te deixa a você chocada. Por mais que não, quando
não tinha a policia pacificadora aqui, nunca aconteceu isso. Nunca foi de policia sair atirando
assim. Eles chegavam atirando sim, ai, mas os meninos [os traficantes]...sempre eles pegavam
aqueles, eh.. aqueles fogos de lá pra saber que a polícia tava vindo, então todo o mundo saíram da
rua...
In the above quotes on police abuse, the youths describe feelings of chock, feeling weak and
defenceless, horrified, uneasiness and feeling offended and devaluated. The above quote also points to
the ambiguity towards the drug lords, shown in the previous section, they were both protectors and
aggressors.
To summarize and returning to the initial question of what makes and have made the participants in
this study feel unsafe, the most obvious reason is shootings and armed people, whether it being the
drug dealers or the police officers. The participants expressed feelings of great relief that the violent
conflicts between drug dealers and the police do no longer happen, however, today the UPP police
officer's, mainly male police officers', abuse of power constitutes a great source of nervousness, fear
and insecurity and it makes them feel unsafe. There is a gender aspect in that girls appear to be more
vulnerable to sexual harassments by the male police officers whereas boys seem to be more likely to
be victims of other kinds of violent encounters with the male police officers, involving gunthreat and
verbal aggression. Furthermore they ask for respect and politeness in the way that the police officers
communicate with the residents. Also, the police officers walking around with drawn weapons make
the participants feel insecure and unsafe, as did the armed drug dealers in the past. They tell about
various forms of physical and verbal violence from the drug dealers in the past and to some extent as
well today, even if much less, and that made them feel uneasy, insecure, offended and unsafe. Still,
they do not name it as abuse of power as with the police officers' violence.
Feeling safe
Having discussed the various reasons for feeling unsafe that these youths told me about, what is there
that made and make them feel safe and what do they think would enhance their feelings of safety in
the current situation with the UPP police unit? This is how Maria Luísa responds when asked directly
about what is 'feeling safe' for her:
Maria Luísa: What makes me feel safe? Ah, safety for me...it's like this, I feel safe inside my house,
normally (...) I don't know how to explain to you what is safety for me...safety for me evolves around
who makes me feel safe./ O que me deixa segura? Ah, a minha segurança, é assim, eu me sinto
segura dentro de casa, normalmente, ou na escola, nem na escola, na escola nem falei muito da
minha escola, não, em fim....não sei te explicar o que é segurança para mim...segurança pra mim tá
em torno de quem me deixa segura.
Me: For example?/ Por exemplo?
30
Maria Luísa: My sister, my brothers./ A minha irmã, meus irmãos.
Me: Your family?/ A familia?
Maria Luísa: ...my family..my friends./ ...a minha família. Meus amigos, minhas amigas.
The quote above points at one of two major aspects visible in the material that I argue seem to create a
sense of security for the youths and that is knowing someone. People that are known, family and
friends, but also known police officers versus the ones coming from outside of the community, seem
to create a sensation of safety:
Fabião: It's true that the UPP make me feel secure from other police officers. / É, na verdade a UPP
me traz segurança de outras policias.
With this he means that before the UPP the police from the outside came and invaded their homes
without authorization, eating their food that they had saved for their children. They thought everyone
was part of the trafficking movement, but, he says, this doesn't happen any longer after the UPP:
Leonardo:..now the police don't come like that....they don't enter your house without
authorization....to drink your water, your yoghurt...your cookies...like before....we feel safe...being
able to sleep with the door open, with the window open and know that nothing will disappear from
your home.../ ....que agora o policial não entra assim....não entra na sua casa sem ter a sua
permissão....e toma a sua água, o seu iogurte, a sua....os seus biscoito...assim igual a antigamente....
a gente se sente seguro...de poder dormir com a porta aberta, com até a janela aberta que pode crer
que nada vai sumir da sua casa...é assim.
Also, known people as in "their own" drug dealers versus the ones from other communities seem to
have created some sort of safety:
Maria Luísa: I feel safe with them [the UPP unit] when....I am more safe with them here
because....before they....I was afraid of......[traffickers] from other communities who weren't...who
weren't from the same drug cartel as mine....the one here....[I was scared] that they would come
here.....because they would not respect, right? They [the traffickers] respect you because they know
you....someone from outside [of the community] you don't know well.....they may respect you but it's
not that respect....they could believe that I am one of the trafficker's women...what if they think that
and they want to kill me...imagine....in that respect I feel safe with them [the UPP unit] here./ Segura
com eles [a UPP], eu me sinto quando...eu tô mais segura com eles aqui porque...antes eles...eu
ficava com medo de...[traficantes] de outros morros que eram...que não eram da mesma facção que o
meu...desse aqui...eles entrarem...porque eles não iam respeitar, né. Eles [os traficantes] respeitam
porque eles conhecem....quem é gente de fora [da comunidade] não conhece bem....pode até
respeitar mas não é aquele respeito...vai...pode pensar que eu sou...que era mulher de traficante,
imagina se eles pensam uma coisa dessa e querem me matar, imagina...eu me sinto segura por eles
[a UPP] tão aqui por isso.
Returning to and diving further into the importance of respect for the participants, here, this girl says
that respect comes with knowing someone and being known to someone. And to respect and be
respected, for the participants, seem to have meant and to mean some sort of protection and safety in a
world of uncertainty. As Marta said: "it was good...for the ones who didn't fuck with them", that is, for
the ones who respected them and got their respect, in the sense that respect was understood in this
particular context. Correspondingly, when this is not so, when being known to someone does not mean
being respected and thus protected, it seems to create feelings of insecurity indignation, as these boys
show:
Leonardo: There was one time when I and a friend were taking pictures in an event...and they (the
police officers) know us very well, we always talked with their captain...(...) and they saw that we
had a camera and everything and even so they told us to open [the bags]....to search through
everything.../ Tem uma vez que eu estava com um amigo que a gente foi e fotografou um evento. E
eles conhecem muito bem a gente, a gente sempre estava falando com o capitão deles (...) E os cara
viu que a gente estava com câmera e tudo e mesmo assim mandou abrir [as bolsas], revistar tudo
que...
31
Fabião: That's a moment of insecurity for us...because we know that they know us (...) many times
they make conversation but still it's.../ E isso é um momento de insegurança da gente, porque a gente
sabe, eles conhecem a gente...a gente sabe que....muitas vezes até conversam mas mesmo assim, é...
Leonardo: ....they always come up with an excuse to command.../ É sempre chega e da um
indiferente pra mandar e.....
However, as with the word 'tranquil' the word 'respect' needs to be seen in the context of the daily life
of these youths in order to understand how they make meaning of this concept and their perceptions of
what is respect and disrespect. As already discussed, knowing someone means that you need to respect
this person, and respect means protection and feelings of safety. Also, as shown in the quote above, to
have a good education and to be polite is part of what is covered by the term respect. As shown in
previous sections, the bad manners and lack of education of the police officers is strongly condemned,
and it is lifted as something that was good with the drug dealers, their education. Thus, good manners,
being polite and knowing someone mean respect and to respect and to be respected in this way seem to
create feelings of safety for the participants and in this particular context. Correspondingly, the police
officers that take time to talk to them in a friendly and personal way, that are interested to know about
their lives and that interact in the life of the community seem to be very appreciated. I argue that part
of the reason for this is that in this specific context, knowing someone is a crucial aspect in order to
gain trust. Not only because of severe abuse by other police units in the past but also because in a
world of total insecurity knowing someone at least created some sort of feelings of safety and mutual
"respect" which protected you if you stuck to the known rules. Knowing someone in this context
became the key to survive, and to be able to trust and feel some sort of security.
What stands out in the material is that when the participants of this study talked about abusive
behaviour in police officers they always talked about them as a male officer. When I asked them
specifically about the female police officers they seem to be very appreciated for their communication
skills and ability to manage situations in a less violent manner than many of the male officers:
Bruno:....there is a good relationship between the female police officers and the community, because
mostly you have problems with the male UPP officers....and they, the women in the UPP, in certain
ways try to prevent that, for example...if a military police officer assaults me and says things to
me....she tries to prevent that in a way....she tries to make him act less (...) aggressively (...) that's a
good thing for me....and many times the female police officers here are involved in projects in the
community..and that's something that I also find cool....because that's a way of...changing somehow
the way of....'cause before (...) the UPP there only came male police officers, right? It wasn't often
that you saw a female police officer, and like, the women in the UPP in some ways take away that
stain that they left of only being violent...I think that they change a bit the form of the UPP (...) before
the police came here a lot to the community, when it was still dominated by the trafficking...the
police came here, they beat up and they did their job, right? Now, the community in certain ways saw
that as a dirty stain for them, like 'I come to your house, I beat you up, I humiliate you and I leave'...
(...) the women today...they change that a bit, they come here in a different way, they talk to you, they
have a dialogue with you, and that takes away some of that stain that the police left.../Porra, assim, a
convivência é boa, porque a maioria das vezes você tem mais problemas com os homens da UPP,
que eles, essas mulheres de certa forma dentro da UPP, tentam evitarem com isso, por exemplo...se
tiver um policial militar me abordar, me falando alguma coisa, ela tenta evitar um pouco isso, tentar
que ele seja, ele aja de menos forma (...) agressiva (...)Aí, isso pra mi é uma coisa boa, que muitas
das vezes, as policias aqui...muitas estão envolvidas em projetos na comunidade, e isso é uma coisa
bem bacana também que eu acho...que é jeito meio de....de mudar um pouco as formas, que antes só
chegavam aqui, antes da UPP, só chegavam policiais homens né? Raramente você viu uma policial
mulher, e tipo, a mulher na UPP tira um pouco dessa mancha que deixaram, esse rastro que
deixaram de só violência, eu acho que elas mudam um pouco a forma da UPP (...) antes existiam
muitas, muita entrada da policia na comunidade quando era ainda dominada pelo trafico, os
policiais chegavam, batiam, e faziam o seu trabalho, né? Aí, a comunidade de certa forma viu isso
como uma sujeira pra eles, como eu entro nessa casa, te bato, te humilho, e saio. Elas não, elas hoje
em dia, elas mudam um pouco dessa forma, elas chegam de um modo diferente, elas conversam com
32
você, dialogam, e isso tira um pouco dessa mancha que ficou pra trás dos policias mesmos, fazer isso
com você.
Bruno continued telling me that the female officers help out a lot in the relations between the
community and the police unit but that the male officers sometimes ruined their effort. He told me of
examples when the female police officers try to solve a situation but are left without saying if in the
patrol there are three male officers and one female. Also, the female police officers and their approach
and willingness to communicate and have a dialogue seem to create trust in the residents:
Fabião:...there is a team of [police officers]..that goes around in the homes to find out how....what's
happening....if the resident needs something....if there were only men in the UPP that wouldn't
happen...they even have a special team for that....and that's unusual, that that happens..../ Bom, tem
um...tem um equipe de...que vai na casa de procurar saber como...o que é que ta acontecendo...se o
morador tá precisando de alguma coisa...já..já...se só tivesse homem na UPP já não ia acontecer
isso, mesmo tem esse equipe...e isso é bem raro acontecer isso...que já ta...
Leonardo: many...many people, like....when they are approached by a police officer....they
refuse....not because they are guilty of something but because the police officers...the men, already
when approaching.../...muita...muita pessoa assim..quando é abordado pro policial...nega de ser
abordado...não por estar devendo nada mas porque os policiais...homens já chegam...
Fabião: ...they do it in an aggressive mode..../ ....chegam de uma forma agressiva...
Leonardo: ...and the women don't....the women....the people accept it because they know that the
women listen in order to have a dialogue/ ...e já que as mulheres não cara...as mulheres...eles...eles
aceitam porque sabem que elas escutam pra dialogar.
However, even if the youths talk a lot about abuse of power by the male officers, they also tell of
many male officers that are very nice, cool, polite and not abusive, officers who converse with them,
give classes and are active in community projects. One girl, Taís, mentioned that you can always count
on the police officers if you need something, medical care or whatever it might be. This was for her a
great source of feeling safe with the UPP.
The second aspect, apart from knowing someone and being known, that seems to create feelings of
safety is amusement and social life. The residents in this community all know each other and family,
friends and social activities are extremely important, as shown in the earlier discussion. I argue that
this might be a reason why the regulation of their parties and amusement and the police interventions
on these occasions are so criticized. Not only because they are youths that want to party, and not only
because of the aggressiveness and the police abuse that sometimes occur on these occasions, but also
because in a world of insecurity being together and dancing and entertaining oneself mean doing
something normal with people that you feel safe with and it allows you to relax and forget about all
the bad things and about feeling unsafe for a while.
Me: Before the UPP, what was there here that gave you a feeling of tranquillity in that insecure
situation?/ Antes da UPP, o que era que dava pra você uma sensação de tranqüilidade nessa
situação insegura?
Bruno: Ah, what we had here? For example, we often had parties (...) dancing, cultural parties, and
also...we often had 'feijoada'1 before....(..) and, like, without the police interfering, and also, in a
certain way, without the trafficking interfering....it was like a normal life....but...we were all scared
that there would be a conflict, but we had parties, dancing, parties for the children, for Easter,
Christmas (...) Now, we continue having that but in certain ways we have to have an agreement with
the police....before we didn't have to do that (...) before the parties didn't have an agreed on time that
they had to end (...) they could end at 8 in the morning (...) for the community to get used to that
won't be easy, there's no way of getting used to that (...) before there wasn't that control of us....before
we weren't controlled (...) now we have to have that control because we need to respect their work as
well....so, it's a bit complicated.../ Ah, o que tinha? Por exemplo, muitas das vezes tinham festas no
1
Feijoada = a Brazilian meal consistent of meat, rice and black beans and that is often eaten together as
a social activity.
33
(campo desportivo) por exemplo de bailes, festas culturais também que, tinha muita feijoada
antigamente (...) e tipo sem a interferência da polícia, e sem interferência do trafico de certa forma,
eles tinham, era assim uma vida normal, por exemplo, mas todo o mundo tinha meio que medo da
entrada dos conflitos, mas tinham festas, tinham bailes, tinham festas pra as crianças, tipo festa de
páscoa, festa de natal, toda a festa que tinham normalmente. Hoje em dia, ainda continua tendo mas,
é assim, de certa forma aqui tem que entrar em parceria com a policia, com a UPP (...) antigamente
não (...) que antes existiam festas que tinha...assim....não tinha horário pra terminar, por exemplo
(...) terminava lá pelas oito da manhã (...) então de certa forma pra comunidade se acostumar com
isso não vai ser muito bom, não tem como se acostumar com isso (...) antes não tinha esse controle
nosso, antes a gente não era controlada de certa forma, hoje em dia a gente tem que ter o controle de
a mais porque é, tem que respeitar o trabalho deles também, então, fica meio complicado, essa parte
sim.
The importance of social life and knowing one another might also be a reason for why the UPP is
praised for arranging all sorts of social events. I argue that for these youths being part of a family and
a community and the security and safety that this gives them is extremely important. Correspondingly
they talk about their community with a lot of pride and positive words. When this social sphere is
disturbed and controlled by the police this affects their feeling of identity and autonomy as to creating
their own safety in their own way. The police interfere in an intimate situation and the youths feel
deprived of identity and autonomy.
Other frequently mentioned examples of enhanced safety that the participants told me about and that
the UPP unit has brought are better health opportunities and that the community is now open for
projects aiming at improving the health of the residents and improving their awareness of health risks
such as HIV. The youths express great relief over this. Also, they express feelings of safety as to
knowing their rights and being able to articulate them and having them heard. However, there seems to
be a big difference between the youths that are more involved in social and awareness-raising projects
and the ones that are not. The latter are the same that had relatives in the movement. With this said,
what the youths bring forth is: that they can denunciate crimes, committed both by the police officers
and others; that they have learned their rights as citizens and how to exercise them, that they can walk
around freely inside and outside the community and that they feel less stigmatized in that the doors to
the surrounding society have opened up. Bruno told me about an incident with a police officer that
verbally offended him when he was doing his job and telling the police officer to move his car from
the parking for the residents. He told me that he felt very offended but that he was able to handle the
situation well because he knew his rights. He says:
Bruno: But I feel very safe in a variety of ways (...) I was very afraid before but now that I've
studied, like...my rights, I try to learn everything I can to be able to control myself and speak
well..and that's a big personal achievement for me (...) I try to teach that to the community, how to
avoid conflicts, it's a very good thing./ Mas, eu, eu me sinto assim, muito seguro nas diversas
maneiras (...) eu me sentia muito com medo antes mas hoje em dia que já estudei assim, os meus
direitos, tento cada vez mais aprender o máximo possível das coisas pra em momentos assim
conseguir me controlar, conseguir falar bem, e tudo mais...e isso pra mim, já é uma grande
conquista minha (...) eu tento passar isso pra comunidade, evitar conflitos, é uma coisa muito boa.
Other things that the participants mention that would enhance their feelings of safety in the community
in relation to the police officers are: if the police did not walk around with weapons in their hands,
especially in the night when they tend to do that; that they should not fire without reason especially not
when children are present; that the police would need education and that they should do more
investigative work instead of just running randomly after who they believe are dealing; that they
should invest in re-educating the former drug dealers and show them other options. Also, as discussed
earlier, some express a concern that they believe that the police don't dare to deal with the drug
34
traffickers that are still left in the community and that the police should really work towards
eliminating the drugs and the drug dealing from the community.
To summarize this section, if the male police officers were mentioned as the main aggressors and
abusers of their power, the participants underline the positive effect that the female police officers
have on the way of working with the relations with the community through communication and a will
to resolve problems through communication instead of provoking conflict. Whether it being female or
male police officers, communication with the residents seems to be part of what creates security and
trust, and this is enhanced by the youths. They tell about how much they appreciate the police officers
that talk to them in a personal and friendly way. Also, 'respect' in this context seem to create feelings
of safety and is much about knowing someone but also about being polite. The drug dealers respected
this social code, and this is also demanded from the police officers in order to instill feelings of safety
in the residents. Hence, what is asked for in the police is for them to be polite, and to treat the residents
with respect, they are asked not be abuse their power and to respect the residents rights as citizens.
Furthermore, social life and entertainment seem to be important in order to feel safe and thus the
police controlling and interrupting these occasions and the complaints that this brings must be seen in
this light. Also, this involves feelings of dignity, autonomy and identity, which I argue were very
important issues for the participants of this study. Finally, safety for these youths also involve
improved health care, education possibilities, that the police help them with whatever they might need
and knowing their rights as citizens and being able to exercise them.
Concluding discussion
The results part of this thesis started with a section describing how the youths perceive their everyday
life in the community before and after the 'pacification'. It went on to describe the ambiguity that the
participants show in their feelings towards the police officers, the drug lords and the change that the
installation of the UPP meant, and in the last two sections the aspects of 'feeling safe' and 'feeling
unsafe' were analysed more in depth. Hence, the results part has gone from a more general level to
unveil deeper and deeper levels of analysis. The aim of this thesis was to find answers to how youths
in one Rio de Janeiro low-income community with a UPP police unit experience their every day lives,
what made and makes them 'feel safe' and 'feel unsafe', and how this has changed since the installation
of the police unit. It further aimed at answering how they perceive the police officers and their work in
the community.
I argue that a key aspect in this thesis is the fact that concepts and words and the meanings behind
them are context-bound. What is tranquil for these youths is always in comparison with worse
communities. Also, for them, living under the threat of violence has been normalized. In the same
way, the concept of 'respect' is context-bound and what is regarded as 'abuse of power'. Respect in this
context seems to be much about being polite and about knowing and being known to someone. If you
know someone you respect and can expect to be respected back. And knowing someone means some
sort of safety. Thus, these concepts are intertwined. I find that the police abuse and aggressive
behaviour in some of the police officers, is the single biggest reason for feelings of insecurity among
the participants of this study. Also, there are gender specific aspects to this where boys seem to be
more vulnerable to physical and verbal aggressive behaviour from the male police officers and the
35
girls are more in the risk of being sexually harassed. Furthermore, the female police officers are
acknowledged as being a positive force in breaking with violent behaviours in the police and
promoting a more communicative and problem-solving approach. In fact, communication and that the
police officers take time to talk and get to know the participants were highly appreciated and
something that seems to create feelings of safety. However, the youths would like the police officers to
go after the drug dealers to a greater extent, to avoid any unnecessary shooting or walking around with
arms in the hand, to be more involved in community activities and to answer for putting a final end to
the drug abuse and the drug dealing in the community. However, they also tell about how much they
appreciate the police officers that are friendly and take time to talk to them and get to know them.
Ambiguity is a telling word to describe the youths' feelings towards the police and the situation. They
see the police officers both as a possibility to protection and with scepticism, which confirms previous
research on how youths see the police interventions in an abusive situation (Richardson-Foster et al.,
2012; Robinson & Stroshine, 2005). I see this ambiguity ultimately as a sort of justified cautiousness,
since in this case and in this context, the youths have the experience of the police officer many times
being the abuser and the aggressor himself ( see also Goldstein, 2003; Ribeiro, 2008). So, who can and
should you trust, and are the UPP units really the beginning of a long-term improvement and enhanced
security after several failed attempts and decades of abuse towards the residents? This cautiousness
among the residents of 'pacified ' communities has been observed in earlier research (Serrano-Berthet,
2012; Trindade et al., 2012). Thus, the way of enhancing the tranquillity of the community as well as
not naming the conflict between the police and the drug cartel straight forwardly might have to do
with this fear that many residents in Rio communities have had when speaking with whoever it might
be about the situation; fear of being punished by the drug lords if they were seen or overheard talking
negatively about them or if they were seen talking to the police, as well as fear of what would then
happen to them if the police leaves the community and the drug lords regain the control. Finally, I find
that a positive result of this thesis is that the youths are optimistic towards the future and that they
have dreams for their lives. They recognize the fact that they have normalized violence due to a longterm exposure to it and not knowing another reality apart from worse ones, and they welcome the
change that it signifies realizing this and the possibilities that a life free from this kind of violence
would mean.
The study parted from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and especially article 3 on the
best interest of the child (UN, 1989) pointing to the fact that every institution in every decision that
involves children has the duty to see to their best interest. Thus, since Brazil has ratified the
convention the Rio de Janeiro pacifying police unit has the responsibility to see to that the best interest
of the children in the communities that they attend is respected and made a priority. In order for this to
happen, the views of the children and how they experience the situation are crucial. This goes in line
with the philosophy behind community policing since it is supposed to be people-centred, that is, it is
supposed to part from the public's opinions and needs concerning their own security (Powell,
Skouteris & Murfett, 2007).
It is important to keep in mind that this study does only include one community and that the situation
with the UPP police units differs greatly from place to place. As the youths so many times pointed out,
their community is a tranquil one in comparison to other communities, even communities with a UPP
police unit. Hence, it is not possible to draw general conclusions. However, I do argue that it is
probable that some of the results could be found in other communities with UPP police units, since the
results of this thesis correspond to previous research (Machado da Silva, 2010; Serrano-Berthet, 2012;
Trindade et. al., 2012) that covered a much wider scope and involved both communities with and
36
without UPP police units. Also, this thesis is only concerned with the perceptions of the youths about
the situation and about their experiences of 'feeling safe' and 'feeling unsafe', hence, it does not claim
to give a general image of the situation in the community nor does it claim to "tell the truth", but one
truth of many. Thus, I find that an interesting area of future qualitative research would be on how the
police officers experience the situation and their work. Yet another important thing to keep in mind is
that since the participants of this thesis included only two that had relatives among the drug faction,
this thesis might more reflect the thoughts of the youths not involved. Thus, this would also be an
interesting area of further qualitative research.
Not surprisingly this study confirms the findings made in earlier research on the subject (Machado da
Silva, 2010; Serrano-Berthet, 2012; Trindade et al., 2012), namely that the installation of UPP units in
communities that have been in an armed conflict between the drug lords and the police has brought
great relief to the residents. Mainly that is in terms of not having to be afraid of stray bullets and of
getting caught in sudden shootings between the drug lords and the police as well as the fact the drug
traffickers are no longer armed. Also, enhanced security in terms of improved health and social
services, construction work, political rights and less stigmatization have been shown in the above
mentioned studies and this thesis confirms those results. Furthermore, dignity plays a big part in the
participants' lives; protecting their dignity and with that, their autonomy and identity, against the abuse
of power by the police, against social injustice and against stigmatization. Likewise, their sense of
being entitled to rights as citizens plays a big part; the right to live without fear, the right to entertain
themselves, the right to denunciate crimes committed against them either by the drug lords or the
police officers, the right to argue with the police when they do wrong without being afraid of
repercussions, the right to education and health services on the same conditions as the surrounding
society and the right to dreams and hopes for the future. Hence, with enhanced possibilities to the
world outside of the community and with new projects coming in from the outside, 'feeling safe' also
comes with knowing your rights and how to exercise them, it comes with access to better health care
and with possibilities to education. This confirms previous research (Serrano-Berthet, 2012; Trindade
et al., 2012).
However, as the title of this thesis suggests, the installation of a pacifying police unit in the
community is far from being a guarantee for security. As Serrano-Berthet (2012) states, the attempt
with a new sort of pacifying police unit is as much about pacifying the police as it is about pacifying
the communities where it operates. With the UPP police unit, a new kind of security is possible but
also, a new kind of insecurity since the residents are not used to the constant presence of the police,
and the experiences that they have had of the police authorities before the 'pacification' have not been
positive, on the contrary. The participants of this study tell of abusive police officers, sexual
harassments, aggressive behaviour and disrespectful manners. This has been confirmed in previous
research (Machado da Silva, 2010; Serrano-Berthet, 2012; Trindade et al., 2012) even if they tell of
less police abuse and violence in communities with a UPP police unit than without (Machado da Silva,
2010). They ask for more communication and that the police officers take time to talk to them and get
to know them, which confirms previous research on the importance of communicative skills with
children and youths in police work (Mullender et al., 2002; Richardson-Foster et al., 2012; Robinson
& Stroshine, 2005; Roos et al., 2011). Thus, one can say that they don't yet feel safe, but safer.
The contribution of this study to previous research on the results of the UPP is that it is concerned
solely with the youths' perceptions and that it goes more in depth than previous studies that have
covered a greater scope. If previous research has brought up aspects as the importance of mutual
respect and the public's perceptions of safety (Trindade et al., 2012), this thesis goes deeper in trying
37
to seek answers to what these concepts mean to youths in this specific context and from this draw
conclusions that might further an understanding of both the positive and the negative critique towards
the UPP unit. For example, Trindade et al. (2012) brought up the young residents critique towards the
regulation of parties by the UPP unit. This thesis confirms those results but adds to them the aspect of
why it might be that this is so critiqued by the youths. That is, that it might not only be about youths
wanting to party but also about the feelings of safety that a social life can instil and more so in an
unsafe an insecure environment. Hence, on a theoretical level, this study both confirms and develops
the results already made in previous research. I find that IPA as the theoretical approach of this thesis
has given me the freedom and the tools to make this kind of deeper analysis, and that it this way has
enriched the results of the study. As Willig (2007) puts it, IPA has given me the tools to go beyond
preconceived ideas and to keep an open mind to how youths in a certain context and with their own
intentionality make meaning to concepts that many times might be taken for granted.
Furthermore, this study pays attention to how the participants perceive the work of the UPP police unit
and on how they believe that they should work. Thus, the results of this thesis might be of use on an
applied level when it comes to improve the work being done by the police units and the relations
between the police and the residents, since feedback from the public is necessary in order for
community policing to function (Powell, Skouteris & Murfett, 2007). I argue that the police would
need to take all these aspects into consideration and have a dialogue about them with the youths in
order to create trust and a security based on the people and their perceptions of these concepts in this
particular context. This way, the youths would feel that their experiences are validated and that they
are taken seriously (Richardson-Foster et al., 2012; Robinson & Stroshine, 2005). Furthermore, in
order to fulfil the engagement that Brazil has to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the
UPP units would need to hear the children and youths and have a dialogue with them with the purpose
of taking their opinions into consideration in order to see to the best interest of the child in the
pacifying process.
Finally, this thesis aimed at having a children's perspectives approach. Being aware that this can never
be fully achieved and with all due respect for the participants of this thesis, my hope is that it at least
came close to describing and interpreting their stories and experiences in a way that would live up to
their own interpretations of the same. I am very grateful for the confidence that they showed me and
for their willingness to share with me their life stories and I hope that the results of this study and these
youths' stories may contribute in some way to the work with the installations of pacifying police units
in Rio de Janeiro.
38
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Appendix
1. Informed consent - participant
The Research Project:
My name is Therese Leopoldsson and I am from Sweden. I came to Rio de Janeiro in October 2012, to do an
internship on Instituto Promundo, a Brazilian NGO based in Centro, Rio de Janeiro. This organization makes
research and designs community programs in order to promote gender equity, fight domestic violence and
enhance the security and the human rights of children, youths and adults.
This internship on Promundo was part of a master program in The Best Interest of the Child and Human Rights
on the Stockholm University that I am attending. Now, I am back in Rio to gather material for my master thesis,
a research project that is financed by SIDA, a government organization under the Swedish foreign ministry that
administers approximately half of Sweden’s budget for development aid. In this research project the aim is to
investigate what adolescents in low-income communities with UPP think about their daily life, their security and
the presence of the UPP police unit in their community. The results of the study will then be given to Instituto
Promundo as a support for them in their work to improve the lives of youths and children in Rio de Janeiro lowincome communities.
Conditions of Participation:
The research is based on individual interviews. These interviews will be recorded. You as a participant will be
anonymous, that is, your name will not be revealed in the study and the results of the study will only be used for
research. Your participation is voluntarily and you may at any moment decide to discontinue. Research
participants will not receive any financial compensation.
I, ___________________________________, with birthdate _____________________and residence
________________________________________________ declare that I am aware of the conditions of
my participation in the study outlined above.
Rio de Janeiro, the _____ of ______________ 2013.
_________________________________________
(Participant's signature)
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2. Informed consent - legal guardian
The Research Project:
My name is Therese Leopoldsson and I am from Sweden. I came to Rio de Janeiro in October 2012, to do an
internship on Instituto Promundo, a Brazilian NGO based in Centro, Rio de Janeiro. This organization makes
research and designs community programs in order to promote gender equity, fight domestic violence and
enhance the security and the human rights of children, youths and adults.
This internship on Promundo was part of a master program in The Best Interest of the Child and Human Rights
on the Stockholm University that I am attending. Now, I am back in Rio to gather material for my master thesis,
a research project that is financed by SIDA, a government organization under the Swedish foreign ministry that
administers approximately half of Sweden’s budget for development aid. In this research project the aim is to
investigate what adolescents in low-income communities with UPP think about their daily life, their security and
the presence of the UPP police unit in their community. The results of the study will then be given to Instituto
Promundo as a support for them in their work to improve the lives of youths and children in Rio de Janeiro lowincome communities.
Conditions of Participation:
The material of the study consists of interviews with youths living in a community with UPP. These interviews
were recorded. The personal details of the participants will not be revealed in the study and the results of the
study will only be used for research purposes. The participants will be anonymous in the text that will be written
from the interviews.
I,
___________________________________,
with
birthdate
________________________________________________
_____________________and
authorize
the
residence
participation
of
___________________________________________________ and declare that I am aware of the conditions of
his/her participation in the study outlined above.
Rio de Janeiro, the _____ of ______________ 2013.
_________________________________________
(Legal guardian's signature)
42
3. Interview Guide
Presentation
Hello,
My name is Therese and as you have seen in the information leaflet I am very interested in understanding how
adolescents in Carioca communities with Unidade de Polícia Pacificadora, UPP (Pacifying Police Unit) perceive
their daily life, their security and the UPP.
Rules and conditions:
Feel free to answer the questions however you want to and tell me as much as you like. If there is something that
you do not understand or that you want me to explain further, it is just to ask. Ok?
Substantial phase (1.Introduction: The community; 2. Definition of security; 3. Security before UPP; 4.
Security after UPP; 4. Thoughts about the UPP police officers; 5. What the UPP should do in the
community)
1. Tell me about your community...
How is it for you living here in Morro dos Prazeres?
Which are the places that you frequently visit? Tell me more about that.
Which are the places that you avoid going to? Tell me more about that.
Tell me about an ordinary day in your life from that you wake up to that you go to bed.
2. Tell me what feeling secure is for you.
Tell me about one incident in your life when you felt secure.
Tell me all that happened from the beginning to the end.
How did you feel then?
How was that for you?
Tell me about one incident when you felt insecure.
Tell me all that happened from the beginning to the end.
How did you feel then?
How was that for you?
2. Tell me about your life in your community before the pacification.
You said that.....tell me more about that...
You said that.....explain more about that to me...
How did that feel?
3. Now you have told me a lot about how it was for you before the pacification, now, tell me about your life in
your community after the pacification.
You said that.....tell me more about that...
You said that.....explain more about that to me...
How did that feel?
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4. Now we have talked about what it is for you feeling secure and feeling insecure. We also talked about your
life here before and after the pacification. Now, tell me what you think about the UPP police officers.
Tell me more about that/him/her...
Tell me about your most positive experience of a UPP police officer.
How was that for you?
How did that feel?
You told me about a positive experience. Now, tell me about the most negative experience that
you had with a UPP police officer.
How was that for you?
How did that feel?
The UPP police units have a big proportion of women police officers. Tell me what you
think about them?
And now, tell me what you think about the male police officers.
5. To end the interview, tell me what you think that the UPP should do in your community.
Closure:
Now you have told me a lot about your thoughts and your life. Is there anything more that you would like to tell
me that we haven’t discussed?
I would like to thank you very much for sharing this with me and for wanting to participate. Do you have any
questions before we stop?
If you come to think of something you can send me an e-mail. (give my contact information)
44
Stockholms universitet/Stockholm University
SE-106 91 Stockholm
Telefon/Phone: +46816 20 00
www.su.se
45