Abstract

FREDERIC, Sabina. Police work politization in Buenos Aires. Gendarmes and local police facing proximity policing. Trab. soc. [online]. 2018, n.31, pp.33-51. ISSN 1514-6871.

In Buenos Aires since 2003, police and gendarmes increased geometrically. Many of these uniformed people were deployed in neighborhoods, towns and commercial areas under a new policy: proximity policing. This was a means of redistribution the expanding public force, both in Brazil with the creation of the Pacification Police Units justified in a "community police" model (Menezes, 2014) and in the world, promoting co-production of patrolling between uniformed and neighbors (Durao, 2012). Our ethnographic research with Local Police and Gendarmes, involved in this policy, shows how police work was politicized due to the historical moral value of the political links forged in the approach of state agents to the neighborhood community and its neighbors (Frederic, 2017); and by the inscription of the uniformed in pre-existing socio-political plots. This policy introduced the uniformed in the exchange of services, support and recognition, before just reserved to officials, leaders/militants. In addition to conflicts in driving, difficulties of adaptation, or internal discrimination, which went through its protagonists, the research shows the ambivalence that the politicization of police work imprints both on a military or civilian force.

Keywords : Police work; morality; politicization; militarization; ethnographic comparison.

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