The article discusses the violence perpetrated by police from the point of view of the social segments it hits harder: labourers, Black or Mulatto people and the residents of Novos Alagados, one of the City of Salvador's impoverished areas. Through direct observation techniques and thirty-one extensive interviews, the author tried to reconstitute the kinds of violence types and the roles of residents, criminals and police officers in it. In a context of crisis of the informal mechanisms of social control, poverty and unemployment, the action of police staff generates ambivalent reactions. These express the difficulty of the population to take a position when faced to a force, which is perceived as violent and, at the same time, protecting. The residents end up legitimating the brutality of the institutional police behaviour as, while condemning police officers abuse against them, but aligning by police side against individuals seen as outsiders or criminals.
social control; poverty; police; violence