Abstract

FELTRAN, Gabriel  and  MOTTA, Luana. Police and thief:. Runa [online]. 2021, vol.42, n.1, pp.43-64.  Epub Apr 21, 2020. ISSN 1851-9628.  http://dx.doi.org/10.34096/runa.v42i1.8647.

This article aims to reflect on the methodological combinations necessary to understand a social phenomenon as complex as police lethality in Brazil. Specifically, we focus on the repressive police reaction to vehicle robbery and thefts in São Paulo. Methodologically, we mobilize an ethnographic approach, with reconstruction of typical journeys, articulating it with other research techniques, all submitted to the reflexivity proper to participant observation and comprehensive epistemologies. Regarding the contents, inseparable from any theoretical-methodological reflection, we argue that police lethality rates are not “out of control” or reveal “deviation” in police action. This lethality, on the contrary, has very clear patterns of selectivity, recurrence and social legitimation, which we present in this article by articulating ethnographic data with a series of official quantitative data, whether from the socioeconomic profile of city regions, or from different types of criminal and police activities.

Keywords : Ethnography; Methods; Car theft; Police lethality; Inequality.

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