Rethinking Police Violence in Brazil: Unmasking the Public Secret of Race

Authors

  • Jan Hoffman French

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21669/tomo.v0i0.7648

Abstract

In Brazilian cities, perhaps the most disturbing criminal activity is the violence perpetrated by police officers themselves. This article is an invitation and a provocation to reconsider social scientific thinking about police violence in Brazil. Illustrated by a court decision from a Northeastern city, in which a black man won a case against the state for being falsely arrested and abu- sed by a black police officer on the grounds of racism, this article investigates three paradoxes: Brazilians fear both crime and the police; black police beat black civilians; and government offi- cials disavow responsibility by stigmatizing the police on racial grounds. It then proposes an alternative reading of these para- doxes that opens the possibility for rethinking police reform and argues that democratization in Brazil is deeply intertwined with the future of its darkest-skinned citizens.

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Published

2017-10-31

How to Cite

French, J. H. (2017). Rethinking Police Violence in Brazil: Unmasking the Public Secret of Race. TOMO Review. https://doi.org/10.21669/tomo.v0i0.7648

Issue

n. 31 (2017): jul./dez.

Section

Article

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