•  rio de janeiro
• Friday, June 03, 2011
• Inter Press Service

Four decades after Washington declared its 'war on drugs' and began to spread the doctrine south of the U.S. border, the government of the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro decided to shift away from that approach towards a strategy focused on community policing.

The new focus has already produced results in some of the city's favelas or shanty towns, which were long off-limits to outsiders, including police. The process began in 2009 with the installation of 'Police Pacification Units' (UPPs) in the favelas. The new model of public security and crime prevention aims to forge ties of trust between the local population and the police.

The UPPs are based in police stations built in favelas once controlled by drug traffickers or paramilitary militias, to establish and maintain a sustained police and state presence.

In the past, the police only staged violent raids in the favelas, which claimed a large number of civilian victims, produced few results in terms of law enforcement, and did nothing to change the change the balance of power between state authorities and armed drug gangs.

Besides the new focus on relations between the police and the local communities, the government is making an effort to bring running water, sanitation, education and other services to the favelas.

The idea is simple, says the secretary of security of the Rio de Janeiro state government, José Mariano Beltrame, on the UPP web site: 'To reestablish control over territories lost to drug traffickers. In turf wars with rival factions, these groups began an arms race that escalated in recent decades, a war in which the rifle reigns absolute.'

Chapeu Mangueira, home to 200,000 people, is one of the 16 favelas where UPPs have been installed. Already graced with one of the best hilltop views of the sea, the neighbourhood is now also the site of public infrastructure works that are improving the lives of local residents.

Most people in Chapeu Mangueira still do not dare talk about these issues in public. They are afraid that the police will pull out and leave them exposed once again to reprisals from drug gangs. But Josivaldo da Silva, one of the few willing to talk to IPS, said 'Everything has changed for the better. Job training courses have started to be held, health agents have come - we're getting everything here now.'

Statistics from the Rio de Janeiro Institute on Public Security show that the number of homicides in this state went down 18.4 percent between July 2009 and July 2010.

Margio Sergio Duarte, the head of the military police in the state, attributes the success to the shift from the idea of 'the war on drugs' to the concept of 'pacification of the city.' 'That's the approach now,' he said in an interview with IPS. 'In the past we had a war against drugs, and we lost, and we were going to keep losing because our strategy was wrong.'

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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