AN INITIATIVE OF THE WOODROW WILSON SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS AND THE BOBST CENTER FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE Series: Governance Traps Interview no.: T3 Interviewee: Silvia Ramos Interviewer: Richard Bennet Date of Interview: 3 September, 2010 Location: Rio de Janeiro Brazil Innovations for Successful Societies, Bobst Center for Peace and Justice Princeton University, 83 Prospect Avenue, Princeton, New Jersey, 08544, USA www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties BENNET: Today is September 3, this is Richard Bennet, and I'm here in Rio de Janeiro with Dr. Silvia Ramos. Thank you so much for meeting with me. I'd love to talk to you a little bit about some of the work that is going on with the UPP (Unidade Pacificadora da Policia) program here and some of the service aspects of your work. Maybe we could just start by you giving us an overview of some of the programs that are starting right now. I know that there is a UPP program in particular, but then there is also this service element that is being started as well, and you're training a group of people to go in and follow the UPPs. So perhaps you could give us a little idea of what the background of that program is and how long it has been going on. RAMOS: Well, this UPP program-I mean, the police program-is something new for the whole city, and for the whole state and for the history of Rio de Janeiro. It took us almost 20 or 25 years to face and to create an intelligent way to get out of this situation. We went very deep [Indecipherable], or we would fight drug traffickers inside the favelas, and we would kill people and we would hurt people, etc., and we would transform the life of the people that live there into hell. Because even if you were not being hurt, you couldn't go to your school in the morning or you were going to hear the shootings during all night. So this iteration of confronting trafficking drug dealers was a very traumatic situation. Or the state-the police-wouldn't do anything. As a result, these groups would deepen their control, their territory, controlling in these areas. So it took us more than 20 years to create a solution for this. There is a very simple one. There is community policing. The program of UPP doesn't present anything very new or very revolutionary, although it is for Rio's patterns of resolution of conflicts with the criminal situation itself. Almost two years ago, December 2009, it was created; the first experience was kind of a laboratory. And certainly nobody believed it would happen; especially police didn't believe anymore. There was a skeptical perception of the whole city. [Indecipherable] used to have a very skeptical impression of this program, that it would have a solution one day. People living in the favelas wouldn't believe anything anymore because they had one, two, three, ten bad experiences. Each time someone would announce a new experiment, they would say, "Oh, please don't go there, don't come again, because we have been doing this once, twice, three times, four times." Our middle-class people would say, "No, all police officers are corrupt, they are violent, they are unjust," etc. The police officers themselves were maybe the main part of the problem, not of the solution. The least that you could say was that they were skeptical about this, that this thing would be a good experience. There was, someone in the Security Secretariat that decided to try it-and to try hard and to try using some new things to define the moment. I can speak about this after, because I think you are going to interview, or you interviewed, people from the police. BENNET: I will, yes. RAMOS: So I can define after-not just to spend time in our interview to talk about that. But there are four or five or six very different things that are being done. There are people that now especially don't understand why this experience has been very different from other experiences. From the police side of the thing. Then the first experience was good. So one month passed, then two months, three months, four months. Then six months after, the same head of the Public Security Secretariat- BENNET: (Josˇ) Beltrame? RAMOS: - Beltrame and his team decided to introduce the second experience and then the third. Now after one year and a half, we are on the 10th experience. Suddenly those vicious circles became virtuous circles. Suddenly it began to happen that the police said, "We are entering and we are not going to leave." Because this had been one of the traumas. The police would always say in the past, "Now we're here; we're with you the people who live here." Suddenly, after two or three or four months they would leave, because another crisis would begin and the police would have to leave. That population would become orphaned again in the hands of those parallel groups, the drug traffickers' armed groups, all the militias that were a kind of paramilitary group. Then [Indecipherable] began to recognize that the officers that were there in the field were different. They used to be always disrespectful guys, and they were old and fat police officers. These were very young, they were very slim, they were very clean, they were well-educated, saying good morning, good afternoon, etc. So people began to understand there was really a new thing. Then after one year and something, suddenly the governor himself went to Ricardo Henriques-that is, the husband of an attorney, so he would be the guy for you to interview. The governor called Ricardo and said, "Well, this secretary of social assistance and human rights left to be a candidate in these new elections." He said, "I want to put now a technical profile there, and I want, besides taking everything that you have to do in that secretariat, you to open a new area that is creating programs related to UPP that are social and cultural environment programs that are related to the UPP experience." So that the UPP is not only a police experience, but is also an integrated program that is able to say to the people that live there, and to the people that live in other favelas, and to the people that live around the favela and to the people of the whole city: The program of armed violence was not only a question of police, it was a question of also that the state was lacking there. The state was out of that territory. In these territories, education, health, culture, many things that the state should offer in high quality, the state doesn't offer. So we admit that it was not a question-the drug dealers were not there only because the people that live there are violent by themselves. Those drug dealers used to take care of this territory because the state wasn't there, at least in enough condition that it should be and especially in enough quality that it should be. Now, recognizing this, we're not only putting police in those territories, but we are beginning to understand that we need to put integrated social and cultural environment programs and actions and events. And everything that you can imagine happens in Botafogo must happen also inside Santa Marta, which is a favela. It is a situation in the heart of Botafogo. Everything that business companies, the state, the civil society, artists-everybody-offer to Ipanema, we must offer and we must now make it able to go on inside also Cantagalo and Pav‹o-Pav‹ozinho that are the favelas that are inside, in the heart of Copacabana and Ipanema. This is the idea of Social UPP. When we started, Ricardo invited a huge thing from economists, political scientists, educators, social assistance, and cultural producers. We took three months to conceptualize, not only to conceptualize, but to develop the conception of the program because we knew that we had two or three or four others to choose from. There is another that is very much used in Brazil; there is one of the Fica Vivo programs. Have you heard of it? Fica Vivo is a program in Belo Horizonte. It is a social program focused on youngsters from 14 to 25. The police enter the favelas with a program called GPAE (Grupamento de Policiamento em Areas Especiais, Police Grouping for Special Areas). And then the Fica Vivo is a social program that has another name that is cared for and developed by other kinds of people. I won't say it is a competitive program, but they totally share conception, etc. They must work together. Even the name is different. So you had the police program that is called Grupo Especializado em Policiamento de ēreas de Risco. that means group of police in risk areas. It is very much a police name. Then you have this Fica Vivo that means stay alive. That is a kind of a calling for the youngsters. So we had this one. We had also "Ceasefire in Boston." We had many models. We also had the model used in Bogot‡. They decided to think of these areas of the favelas as areas of the city. The Bogot‡ model was a very interesting model for us, but it wouldn't fit for us because it was developed at the municipal level. As you know, and this is a problem in Brazil, the police is at a state level-it shouldn't be, but it is. This is one of the huge problems in confronting and creating responses to security, to public security in Brazil. The person who is the powerful person in the police is the governor, but police issues are at the local level and it is difficult to-. This is one of the difficulties we are having here in this UPP Social, the Social UPP. And we decided it is because 75% or 80% of the public services that are offered inside the favelas, or should be offered inside the favelas-like garbage elimination and schools for the kids and health-are offered by the municipal level, the city level. And we are in a secretariat that belongs to the state. And we are in a secretariat that is not the secretariat that created UPP. Beltrame is one of is the head of the secretariat, of our secretariat and Ricardo Henriques is the head of a different secretariat. We knew that we would have many, many problems integrating actions and making people understand-not only police officers but people in the favelas-that our program should be something that ideally would integrate actions with the police. So we decided, and we know the risks we are taking, to call this program Social UPP. UPP is a very strange name because if you go-have you been inside the favelas? BENNET: Not yet. RAMOS: Not yet, you should be. BENNET: Yes. RAMOS: You are going to see. It is a strange situation where the police officer is carrying a machine gun. You're going to see that; you're going to see it. "Pacified area?" It is strange. But this is the name that the police decided to use. This is something that is changing Rio de Janeiro as a whole, not only in the favelas and not only in the favelas where UPP began. This is changing Rio de Janeiro because police problems-criminal violence inside the favelas-became a matter for Rio de Janeiro and for those who are living in Rio de Janeiro. So if I live in Santa Teresa-that is a middle-class neighborhood-I have many favelas very near to me. I am very safe in my house and I have everything I want, etc., etc. But by night I would hear shootings and I knew that all my neighbors that are living there-my domestic employees, the guy that works in my building, everybody in the street, the guy that sends the bread for me in the morning, that say "Hello, good morning"-I knew they were passing the night and couldn't sleep, etc. It was a trauma for the whole of Rio de Janeiro. Then the next day I would read, probably in the newspaper, that the reason for the shooting that I heard was because there was a group of corrupt police officers and that they weren't paid by the drug dealers and they were fighting with them. So it is important to understand that with Social UPP we are developing programs. We are going to enter with massive social, cultural, symbolic programs inside favelas. We are going to do this and we are almost doing it already. But Social UPP is also a matter for that means. The violence program in Rio and the violence program inside the favelas of Rio, what does that mean? The favelas problem in Rio was not created by the poor people that live inside. It is our responsibility-of everybody in the city. Sure, it is-and it was and it is until now-the main responsibility of the police force. Yes, because it is armed and the criminals have them. But we weren't able to answer this until today-after 25 years, as it were-because we weren't able to answer a police problem that is also a social, a historical, a cultural and an environmental problem. Social UPP, Social [Indecipherable]. For the whole society. For the whole of Brazil. For ourselves, especially for the state level. For that guy at the garbage service who used to think, "Ah, favelas, they are nasty, they are dirty. This is the way that they are, so we are not going to take out the garbage here as we do in Ipanema." We need to send messages to everybody, not only to those people that are living inside the favelas. We need to send messages to companies, to rich people in Rio. We need to send messages to people who work inside, this secretary here, that there is social assistance. BENNET: So perhaps you could go-this is wonderful. Perhaps you could go back to talking about the departments, integrating the departments, the politics of different secretariats and different levels of government that are often very difficult to navigate when reform is trying to be enacted. I'd be interested to hear more about how your department is working with the Security Secretariat and working with the municipal level and what some of the negotiations were as you're trying to set up these programs. Because in the past I understood that the different levels of government often were not on the same page when they were dealing with some of these programs, like GPAE, for example. RAMOS: I'm going to show you this scheme because you need to be kind of an artist to try to integrate this. This is the idea of this integration. This kind of governance that is related to issues-health, education, environment, culture, social assistance, etc.-is a crazy model when you think about territories themselves. When you think about this model-in Portuguese we call is modelo sectorial, a sectoral model, by sectors-this model is a crazy model when you're trying to integrate things in the territory, because you know it's the same children that have a health problem that are in the school. It's the same families of the children that are treating their garbage in the wrong way. It is the same that we should be providing culture and music to. So what happens is the secretary of education says this. And the secretary of health-many times they're offering things and they don't communicate among themselves. They don't communicate their databases; they don't communicate. Then if you could think that each one of these children is a client, this client would have record in this secretariat, another one in this one and another one, and they don't talk to each other. And this is even if you think about the municipal level, the city level. When you think about the secretary of education at the state level and the secretary of education at the municipal level, it is crazy talk. It is the talk of crazy people because they never meet, they never produce programs together. They never act at the same time. BENNET: So how has that been overcome? RAMOS: We created a model. We are this group here. This is our central government's unit. Here we have a state government instance. Here the city government instance. This instance here puts together the mayor himself and the main secretaries. In this instance, here it puts together a kind of a forum. This in the city level; we have had already two meetings with them, with the mayor himself. Then each one of the main secretaries here and here, they nominate what we call focus points. So everything related to all UPPs, to all Social UPPs that I need or that I have ideas or suggestions for or have things to say about-things related to health-I have here in the central unit. I have a person in each one of the secretariats; that is not the secretary himself but is someone that the secretary, in front of the mayor, said would respond. So we have this model of focus points. Does it make sense, focus points? BENNET: Yes. RAMOS: Then we have the same thing to civil society and to the private sector, to companies. We are this unit, and we are developing-but we don't have this instance still yet. We have our local units inside each one of these territories. This unit is coordinated by what we call local governance, the guy who is the coordinator of the local governance of the Social UPP. BENNET: From the favela itself or from the UPP? RAMOS: Neither [Indecipherable]. This coordinator is someone that has at least a master's level, that is probably a student, a post-grad student. He coordinates a team, a small team, with three or four people. These people-some of them they belong to the community, some of them belong to the universities. Then these local units, they also have students that spend half a day and they belong to the state university. We have an affirmative action program here in Rio in the state university; most of the boys and girls studying there are black. They did their high school in a public school, and many of them lived or still live in favelas. So we are planning to work with a team of these estagi‡rio-someone who is studying still, a very young student that is also working. BENNET: An intern? RAMOS: Yes. We decided that the coordinator of this local unit should be someone at a post-graduate level. We don't mean that he would be an intellectual, but we think that this person should always be a person that is able to produce diagnostics, local diagnostics. More than doing things, he is spending his time in understanding what is going on with all the partners. This partner is here, this partner is there. The private-sector partners, I must tell you, in a separate place-we are having a huge offer that we didn't expect from the private sector and also offers and ideas from civil society. So this guy is someone with his laptop, with his 3G and his BlackBerry; he is producing diagnostics all the time and he is listening to local leadership. He is listening to those that come from outside to inside the favelas-what are their difficulties, their ideas? He is also producing for us, all the time, a kind of analysis. We think this guy is almost like a psychoanalyst. The analysis is the treatment itself. If you are able to produce good diagnosis, you are producing the treatment itself, because in this situation we are the actors who are going to articulate and coordinate independent and totally autonomous actions inside one field. This is what we are calling Social UPP. So just to give you an example, there is the sector of social responsibility, of kind of a union of companies. It is a system of the industries. They came here last week. BENNET: [Indecipherable] is that right? RAMOS: [Indecipherable], but especially inside [Indecipherable], things called SENAI (Servi¨o Nacional de Aprendizagem Industrial), that is National Service for Industrial Training. They offer courses that are very expensive-to form people that are going to work in the petrol platforms, that are going to work inside industries, in many places. They form youngsters on the technical level. They came here and they said, "We want to offer 50 places in our courses, in our units, to each one of the UPPs." What do you do? Now, we from this unit are developing this with them and-looking at the small experience that we have at this point, because we began last week-we are thinking about a strategy of what is the best way to offer these places. We know if we just put a sign up inside the UPP, probably the most needed, the most indicative guys are not going to be able to see it, which would be the actors that will help us to identify the guys. Second, we don't want these guys to be formed, to have a diploma six months from now, and what are you going to do? So we are trying to match these guys and the offers of SENAI with the employees. Are you going to be here on the ninth? BENNET: Yes. RAMOS: So I invite you to go to one of these meetings. BENNET: Thank you. RAMOS: Inside a favela here, it's very near here. If you want you can go with us. BENNET: Great, thank you. RAMOS: Then we have a group of companies that have business here, in this region, around the Providen¨a. Then we are discussing with them, "Look, this is the menu of courses that SENAI offers." They offer like a 100 different courses. "What do you need? What positions do you think you should have? You run the light company here? There is a square here. Look at this and tell me-tell me here in this table-which ones. You think you could take 10 of these? If we form guys here in the providence, in the favela here, would you consider taking them? So we are going to match offers and demands. And we are doing nothing-I have only one or two persons in the field. We are working with the captains that are the commanders in the field; maybe the captain is also a kind of person that is circulating. Our local coordinator will be-in the future. But the captains are in the field-some of them for a year. Here in the Providen¨a favela, he is five or six months. We don't have the person there yet. But we will have. But he is the strong guy. He is using a uniform. Everywhere he goes, people say "Hi, captain"-or would hide. If they don't like him, they say, "Oh, he is passing." But at least he is someone that passes. Everybody knows him, etc. We are going to have a local coordinator, but we know that it cannot compete with this. So for us the captain is and will be in the future, even the long future, the central person in the field, because we want to reinforce, we want to consolidate, we want to deepen the process. We want to help the captain and his men, so that they can be free to offer other services. They can do many other things in the field, not only public security, not only police things, but also social things, playing music with the youngsters, playing soccer, etc. Because today if there is a sanitary problem in the streets, the people go to him, "Captain, you saw that there is missing water in the community." He gets crazy trying to find out what is the telephone number of the water company, etc. Because he's almost alone. So we are going to provide the community with all these networks. We are going to be the liaison; we are going to do this liaison. So just as an example, we already have the contact with the guy in Cedae, the water company of Rio de Janeiro. So there is a guy inside Cedae that is responsible-we have the toughest guy-that is responsible to all favelas. We have his cellphone number. "Listen, we're missing water today in the Providen¨a. What is happening?" And he would say, "Oh my God"-and in five minutes he answers. This is not the way that we would like, because, as an example, for the favela Providen¨a, they are restructuring the water service. They should have been doing this in all favelas but they are not. In this favela, they are doing it as a coincidence, because they were already planning to do it. He went, in our last meeting of Social UPP and he presented to everybody what were the plans and then the neighbor said, "No, this is not good-this is good. This they already tried in the past and it didn't work." So they are beginning to participate, even in the structural programs that are being offered. Our idea is not only to solve their problems today-that is what the captain is able to do-but try to help the state level and municipal level and federal level to plan things together with the local leaderships. What we want most at this point is high schools-secondary level for the youngsters. We have schools for the children every place today in Rio, but many times youngsters need to take a bus and go a very long distance to attend high school today. Even the huge favelas like Cidade de Deus, I found out last week, don't have a state-level high school and we need to have it. So next time the governor is going to decide our priorities in education it is mandatory that we need a high school in Cidade de Deus. Why don't we have these until today? Because the people inside wouldn't have-until today-the symbolic social capital to demand, to pressure. And now they have it. BENNET: So how do you identify the local partners in the favela that can work with you to identify, first of all, which of the 50 candidates should go to get the training. And secondly, just the general interaction day-to-day? Is that the job of the captain to identify, or are there local associations in the favelas? How does that work? RAMOS: We have kind of a very precarious model. But it seems to be the model that works. There is a desert of representation inside the favelas, because we had, for 25 years, this system of armies that would say yes or no or what should be. So the neighborhood associations-they are called associa¨›es de moradores -were the people or the person that many times the drug dealer would say, "it would be you," that you would be there. Or sometimes it was someone that had a kind of independence and would be a little representative of that population. But he would always have to deal with the drug dealers. So now that the drug dealers are out and the guns are out, there is a kind of new movement in these associations. They are officially the representatives of each favela. Each favela has its own association, all of them. So the first thing we do is we ask them to come here. We had already two or three meetings with them together. Already we started a local process of creation of Social UPP of Providen¨a. Now we have just starting the creation of Social UPP of City of God, Cidade de Deus, the first meeting will be the 21st. Then first of all we call, we find their telephones. We ask them to come here, and we tell them what we are doing. Then we ask them to tell us who the other partners are. You know there are many local NGOs, groups of [Indecipherable], small groups of-many times in the favelas, a small businessman is a leader, because he has a house that brings people together. Many times he offers a musician by night and he is a very, very important social local actor. In the second wave, we go there, or we ask them to come here. We are in the second favela with this. The first favela was very near here, and we were more comfortable asking them to come here, because they were not being asked to take buses and to spend their money, etc. The second favela is a huge favela very far from here-Cidade de Deus, City of God. We are first going there, because we understand it is very difficult for them, very strange for them if we ask them to come here. They probably are saying, "This is government. This is a convocation or is an invitation." We don't want them to feel that way. So we are going there. So I don't have a model, if we ask them to come here or-. But we have already done two meetings here with all of them together. But only the leadership, only the presidents of these associations. This is a problem for every collective action in Brazil and the U.N. (United Nations) and worldwide, but especially in the favelas. There is this desert of representation, because if you were for 25 years under a governance that would never ask you your opinion, then when you begin to ask this opinion-we need to find them with a kind of a light. Many times we find people that are central actors that are able to produce huge amounts of aggregation, and many times they are local small businessmen. Well, besides that, you know that favelas already have, during these 25 years, social problems. Then, just to mention, we have inside this secretariat two or three programs. One is called Mothers of Peace, Mulheres da Paz-have you heard of it? The other one is called Protego-it means "protect." There are programs for all youngsters. So then, for Providen¨a as an example, and Cidade de Deus, this secretariat has units there. We have people, so we know people there. So many times, it is easy to find partners. But we know that probably they are not the appropriate partners. For instance, to help us to find the ideal guy, it is easy to go inside a [indecipherable]-but if you ask the wrong person to the favela, "Please help me to find," probably you are taking the risk. If you ask the wrong person, that this person is going to sell the office, the position being discussed for instance. It may happen. So it is a very delicate situation. How to conduct yourself inside a favela-because a favela is a world itself-it is something that we are still learning. But I can tell you the biggest difficulty is this. BENNET: Great. I'd love to hear just a little bit more about the planning phase. I know you have limited time, so I won't take too much more of your time. I'd love to hear just a little bit more about the planning phase for the Social UPPs and what the actual organization would be like. How many people will be in them? I know you mentioned the coordinator level. But who are you recruiting to be in these Social UPPs, and what kind of training are they getting, and how are they going to be organized once they actually go out into the favelas? What size and scope are we talking about? RAMOS: I know very well what size we are going to have in this. We have 10 UPPs and until December, our target is to form them. There will be 10 coordinators, 30 assistants and hundreds of these students, these interns. No, there is another expression that I can't remember now. These are students that spend some hours a day there-kind of, as you study you have a job. They receive a grant to do this; it is not a salary. Then I know how we are recruiting there. We are recruiting the first level, the coordinator, in my network, in the university and NGOs' networks. The guys of the second level-the assistants-I am still confused about, because I know some will be university-level students who are going to work, [indecipherable] time. But some of them will probably be persons of the community. We are going to announce these places and then we are going-. I don't know, I'm going to see who is going to appear, which kind of CV (curriculum vitae) I am going to have. I'm not clear about these, too. This third level we are doing with UERJ (Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro), the University of the State of Rio de Janeiro. So we are going just to announce this inside, and they are going to coordinate these guys in our fields. We are supposed to put these people in the field in December, in these 10 UPPs, because government is promising that until December they are going to create more-five or six or seven UPPs. Our goal is that we are going to work until December in the 10 UPPs that are established. Probably they are going to the territory first, and we are going to produce a kind of training, I don't know when, but probably in December, when we will already have experience about what it is to create this local level. BENNET: Great. That's pretty small numbers of teams if it is going to be, say, 140 people, 150 people to the size. So is it going to be based off of the scale of the favela, so bigger favelas will have larger teams? RAMOS: Yes, no-we are planning. In the beginning we are planning to try this. Probably what will happen in the future is that-. This is an experience. Probably in the small favelas, I can see that we won't have the necessity we will have in large favelas. BENNET: Great. I don't want to take up too much more of your time. Is there anything else that I haven't covered that you think is pertinent to mention relevant to the discussion? RAMOS: Related to innovations? BENNET: Yes. RAMOS: Maybe the most important thing is to understand-this is the last thing I'll say-that this is not something related to successful societies. This is related to failed societies. The question is, why we didn't do this before, 20 years ago? Why we as a society took so much time to produce a kind of answer that is something. We shouldn't have favelas-but worse than that, we shouldn't have people under armed laws in territories that are like 50 meters from here, as I have in the neighborhood where I live. Where we have 600 favelas in Rio and we have UPPs only in 10. Then I think this should be understood as a model of changing the lack of hope, changing the lack of hope in all these levels, in the state level, in the municipal level, in the federal level, in the business sector and in civil society. I don't think that this model fits very well in this idea that you have an idea and-. We have here a huge crisis. Everybody is very happy in Rio and many of them are very, almost euphoric-it is because, it didn't work for twenty-five years and now it is working. BENNET: Do you know why exactly this happens to work now? I mean, what political factors are involved? We're very interested in trying to figure out-all these other programs, GPAE, its predecessors failed. Why now? What makes it work this time? RAMOS: It is a kind of Ph.D. thesis to tell you. I think-this is my personal opinion-the key factor was always the police cooperation. What is different from S‹o Paulo, and what is different even from Pernambuco-today they have a higher homicide rate than Rio-is that the problem in Rio was not only the violence, the homicide rates, it was the model, the way the violence was and is still organized. This model of taking care, in armed groups, armed parallel groups, of parts of the city. Not the field like in Mexico, not in the far-away areas like in Colombia, but in the heart of Rio de Janeiro. So this was our special problem. The thing was it was very difficult to manage. We still have violence, criminality, etc. But now we are dealing with this thing where the state would take care of this area here, except this one. And here inside-with entrances, a very defined area-the owner was another lord, was a drug lord that would say, "Now you can do this, now you can use colors, you can dress of this color. Today you cannot dress with color, with blue. You're going to change, etc.", this crazy thing. I think that what we had during the last 20 years that was very different from S‹o Paulo and from any other places-in Rio it was the police model. It was a combination of being very violent, very combative, confronting bandits with "Me-I'm going to kill them. I'm very rough, tough, I have a very high moral-I [Indecipherable] this, etc. And this helped to develop this curse of confrontation. Regarding the reality of the territory, when the police officer would go there, the drug dealer would say, "Hi, come on, how much you earn a month? I'm going to pay you 10 times here now. Now you take this and you're going to release me." It began to happen once, twice, many, times. It began to create a culture inside the police corporation. If you are dealing with favelas, you can have a special way of dealing with them, in the same way that you can kill them. Because I enter shooting, I don't mind if you are an innocent person or if you are a person that belongs to the drug dealer. If you are innocent, I would say that you belong to the drug dealer because as a symbolic way of city thinking about the favelas, everybody that is inside is a criminal. Many middle-class people used to think like this. "Ah, they are all criminals. If they are not criminals, they are their friends, they are their allies, etc." Then we began to develop a crazy, symbolic way of thinking. The police corporation wasn't able to stop this. This articulation between being very violent and being very corrupt transformed the police. It took a kind of very difficult will to stop-suddenly. I think that Beltrame is why we did it. He is a police officer only. He is not intellectual. You're going to see, he's not intellectual, he is not very-he is not that intelligent. He is not a genius. This probably is why it is working. It is because he has a good sense as a police officer that is uncorrupt. He said, "Oh, this is wrong; it is not working. It has not been working for 20 years, let's try another way." You know he is very calm; he doesn't have this speech of "The bandits, we are going to kill them, we are going to confront them. All this, it is like this." So he began, in a way that I myself cannot understand how, he managed to be the leader of this new era. In the future we are going to think about him as a genius, because he was able to stop a movement that seemed to have no end of falling in an abyss. But the way that he did it is so simple. He didn't create a very special thing, nothing. He created a model that has some-. All the police officers there are new. They are specially trained; they earn a little more than the normal police officers. In the past, everything that was the worst was for the favela. The worst cars, the worst police officers, the worst men, the worst soldiers-they were for the favela. For the middle class, there were the best-the most beautiful, the most clean, the ones that would earn most, the newest car. Then he changed: the newest for the favelas, the best for the favelas, those that earned more. The beautiful uniforms are for the favelas. He changed that. Second, there are a lot of them. So one is taking care of the other-you don't have many opportunities for corruption. Third, the commander is in the field. He is not in the [Indecipherable]. Because inside a favela, if you are a soldier you would say, "Ah, you bitch, you-get away from here." And the person would say, "No, you're not respecting me. But who am I going to talk to?" Now, I'm going to talk to the commander. He is every day in the favela from 8 o'clock in the morning until 9 or 10 at night. This guy gives his cell-phone number. So now I don't need to be able to talk to the powerful people that are outside; the commander he is inside. The commander is not a police officer himself. He is a kind of an ombudsman. He is the one that I can talk to if you are treating me bad and you are a soldier in the square. People say in the favela, [Indecipherable] loca, I'm going to tell [Indecipherable]. And the soldier says, "Everybody says, 'Ah you're telling [Indecipherable].' I'm going to tell to the captain." I think myself, "Captain, your soldier named- ." So this kind of relationship is the relationship that we from the middle-class always had with the police officers. These are things that I think are changing. There is nothing very new on this. With the other experiences like GPAE and DPO (district police officer), the soldier would stay there alone, by himself. It was not that he was bad; he became bad because he was also being humiliated. He was alone there. Ten boys together would pass. They would say, "I'm going to kill you if you do anything. I'm going to pass by here with a big amount of drugs and I'm going to pass here and you're not going to stop me. If you do this tomorrow, you're going to be here and I'm here and I have a gun and I'll shoot you." Then this guy was alone inside that small office, that small house. They were only three or four or five, two or four by turn, at a time. So very, very simple police strategies. I think this is the miracle. BENNET: Thank you so much for your time. Innovations for Successful Societies Series: Governance Traps Oral History Program Interview number: T-3 ______________________________________________________________________ 2 Use of this transcript is governed by ISS Terms of Use, available at www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties Use of this transcript is governed by ISS Terms of Use, available at www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties