The Challenge of Military Police Training in the State of Rio De Janeiro: Utopia Or Real Possibility?
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Universal Journal of Management 5(12): 570-580, 2017 http://www.hrpub.org DOI: 10.13189/ujm.2017.051204 The Challenge of Military Police Training in the State of Rio de Janeiro: Utopia or Real Possibility? Marcio Pereira Basilio1,2,*, Vicente Riccio3 1Department of Production Engineering, Federal Fluminense University, Brazil 2General Staff, Military Police of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 3Department of Public Law Material, Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil Copyright©2017 by authors, all rights reserved. Authors agree that this article remains permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License Abstract This study represents research that sought to depends in large part on effective training. The training understand the formative process of public security process is also important because it seeks to convey professionals in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from the information as well as to develop skills, attitudes, and perspective of the military police officer. Training is the concepts. In a repressive security policy, police officers are systematic process of orienting the comportment of people trained to act in a reactive manner. However, in a policy toward organisational directives. In the case of public based on management and prevention, police officers are security organisations, these objectives adhere to the trained to react proactively toward the resolution of objectives of the security policy promoted by the problems that emerge in everyday life. government. The relevance of this study resides in its The process of training should make the necessary academic consideration of the model of military police knowledge available to police officers to carry out their training and its influence on the implementation of public daily activities [1]. However, the nature of police work is security policy and how it compromises its results. Thus, complex. In a democratic society, police officers should be the research is predominantly qualitative in character. It is proactive in seeking to act to solve problems. Thus, the also an exploratory study that seeks to understand the responsibilities of the job in police work are amplified, and police training process for the Military Police of the State its complexity emerges in this context. Therefore, the of Rio de Janeiro from the perspective of the military formative process should include knowledge of the legal, police officer, a field in which there is little accumulated social, and psychological order, as well as of the expertise and systematic knowledge in Brazil. The research inherent to police activity. methodology consists of documentary and bibliographic Understanding the daily activities of the police is the fieldwork. Twenty-four semi-structured interviews with first step toward an analysis of the efficiency of a police military police officers were conducted and processed training programme. Police training should be intimately using content analysis. The results were classified into five related to the service to be performed in society. Therefore, categories. The results reveal that, from the perspective of it is important to contextualise police work within the interviewees, the training course for soldiers should democratic society. The autonomy of police action, in the join theory and practice, undergo investments in social context, is intrinsically related to the conceptual infrastructure, include trained teachers, and allow for the instrumentalisation that the public security officer broaching of topics related to the complexity of police possesses. service, thereby reducing militarism. In this regard, this Therefore, this study aims to comprehend the public study opens up new questions: Why this type of training? security officer training process in the state of Rio de What is the underlying logic of the security policy in Rio de Janeiro. The research was guided by the following question: Janeiro? What is the perception of the police in relation to the Keywords Public Security, Police Training, Brazil, training received in the police academy in function of the Government daily activities that they perform in the police service? It is also an exploratory study that seeks to understand the police training process for the Military Police of the State of Rio de Janeiro (Polícia Militar do Estado do Rio de Janeiro – PMERJ) from the perspective of the military 1. Introduction police officer, a field in which there is little accumulated The shift in focus to the performance of police officers and systematic knowledge in Brazil. The research Universal Journal of Management 5(12): 570-580, 2017 571 methodology consists of documentary and bibliographic only patrolling, can do other things associated with other fieldwork. Because the author has been a senior officer of duties, as suggested by the following [4]: the institution since 1990, participant observation is also “Transit police also patrol, patrol officers control transit, involved. detectives advise youths, juvenile delinquency officers The fieldwork consisted of the performance of collect evidence about crimes, riot police also guard public semi-structured interviews with twenty-four military buildings, and all do a lot of administrative work”( pp. police officers. The interviews were transcribed and 122-123). processed using, which is detailed in the body of work. The Police work is also commonly described in terms of the research is predominately qualitative in character. The situations in which the police become involved, including study’s findings paint a chaotic picture that delineates the crimes in progress, domestic disputes, missing children, training process of the Military Police of the State of Rio de automobile accidents, suspicious persons, alleged Janeiro that tends toward inefficiency in cognitive burglaries, public disturbances, and unnatural deaths. In construction, which is necessary for public security officers these cases, the nature of police work is defined by that to address the complexity of their daily activity. which police officers must address. Bayley [3] asserts that “the work can be described in terms of actions executed by police during situations, such 2. Materials and Methods as arresting, reporting, reassuring, advising, providing first aid, counselling, mediating, disrupting, threatening, citing 2.1. The Nature of Police Work – Problems and and so on”(p.121). In these cases, the work of police Contradictions officers is that which they do in the situations they encounter. To understand the topic of military police training in the Despite the conceptual distinctions among duties, state of Rio de Janeiro, it is necessary to identify what situations, and outcomes, they are interdependent. In other duties, situations, and actions are involved in police service. words, the structure of duties affects the types of situation Police training is not limited solely to analysing in which a police officer becomes involved; the situations programmatic content, discussing working hours, and/or influence the spectrum of likely outcomes; the results the methodologies employed but also includes aspects shape the situations that the public is encouraged to report related to the society in which the police officers are to the police; and the situations partly determine the formal inserted [2]. The training should prepare the officer to duties within the police organisation. interact with the society from which he was recruited. To understand the nature of police work, one must first Therefore, this section presents background information infer something regarding the social system in which the necessary for understanding the variables that are police officer is inserted. Kant de Lima [5] exhibits two ever-present in police service. models of society, which he denominated “parallelepiped” According to Bayley [3], ‘to define what police do is not and “pyramidal”. In the first model, the rules that regulate a simple question, not only because it is difficult to insure social conflicts have a generic aspect. That is, their effects permanent access to them, but also for intellectual reasons’ are distributed equitably throughout society. The social (p.118). The taxonomy used by the author identifies three class that an individual belongs to does not matter, the law distinct ways to describe police activity, each from applies to him or her as well. In the second model, the rules different information sources. Police work can refer to, first, of the utilisation of public space are universal but not that which the police officer is designated to do; second, to general. That is, although the laws are the same for the situations which he or she has to address; third, the everyone, they do not apply to everyone in the same way actions that he or she should take to address those but rather in a manner particular to each person. situations. Consequently, police action in these models is Duties are organisational descriptions of what the police differentiated. do – patrol, investigate, control traffic, advice and Kant de Lima [5] asserts that the police, ultimately, are administer. Once staff patterns are normally archived, we the designated institution to empirically enforce, in both can easily determine the proportion of personnel assigned models, the rules of the utilisation of public space. to different activities. The greater the amount of formal Regarding the first model, the police will be the legitimate specialisation