Abstract
What events become “police cases” in everyday policing? This question permeates the analytical approach of this paper. Covering police practices of the policing program Ronda do Quarteirão in Ceará, Brazil, we analyze how neighborhood-level events become police cases during patrols. Our aim is to articulate the production of police practices with the interactions and relations maintained between police and population in neighborhoods classified as “problematic”, due to the large number of police occurrences taking place in the area. Special attention is given to the conflicts that permeate the production of police occurrences as sociological phenomena. Here, we open up paths through which to relate police work to local specificities, and to how situated residents trigger Military Police action by calling on them in the everyday. Methodologically, this was a qualitative study, marked by the participation in car-based police patrols. Techniques used include direct observation and semi-structured, episodic interviews. The study lasted three years and took place between 2011 and 2013.
Keywords:
police practices; police occurrences; reports; conflict; community policing