Multiple Meanings of Community Policing for a Brazilian Military Police

• In Event: Community Policing in a Worldwide Perspective

Abstract

In recent years, the Brazilian military polices have adopted community policing programs in order to increase citizens confidence in the institution and to reduce crime rates. The objective of this study was to verify what the police frontline personnel understand by community policing and how they perceive the results of its implementation. A survey was conducted with 592 military policemen involved in operational activities in 32 military police companies of Belo Horizonte. The results point to a vast plasticity of the concept, which came to mean any type of activity carried out by police officers and by the community without the formal cooperation of the police; making the category "community policing" a new name for old police practices.

Authors

• Ludmila Ribeiro, UFMG

• Alexandre Diniz, PUC - Minas