This paper shows how the police took diverse organizational forms in national contexts, instead of producing in its agents everywhere a very similar world view. Centrally or locally organized, the men/women in charge express themselves in the same terms. We try to explain this trend by pointing to the daily experience of policing which are shared by all police forces, and where any explanation of police thinking must be sought. We present as example the daily activities of Rio de Janeiro's police in early twentieth-century, showing their relation with the elites and how they create at the same time the boundaries of police authority and the perception of the existence of certain groups against whom extra-legal means of pressure can be exerted.
police; organizations; world view; elites