To employ less force

INTERVIEW / Luis Gerardo Gabaldón

Impelled by the challenges posed by organized crime, Latin America countries are faced with the task of improving their police forces, improving their transparency, efficiency and relations with the community they serve. Venezuela’s Luis Gerardo Gabaldón has been studying mechanisms of social control as responses to crime, and states that some of the failures of the current police forces in the region may be attributed to the fact these mechanisms are disconnected from the control of police violence.

Gabaldón, from the University of Los Andes and the Andrés Bello Catholic University in Caracas, discusses the need for practical training manuals and adequate training for police officers, as well as more efficient training in use of force that avoids, at all costs, passing the ‘point of no return’.

Along with academic work at the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology and in the Center for Training in Surveilled Liberty in Vaucresson, France, Gabaldón has also traveled across Latin America getting to know the realities of various police forces in a number of countries. In this interview, Gabaldón also comments on Brazil’s Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora (UPPs) (or roughy translated, Police Peacekeeping Units) based in Rio de Janeiro, and the interaction between police forces and the communities they must serve and protect.

Use of force procedures developed in Latin America were based on Anglo-Saxon settings. What are the main differences with respect to Latin America, and what should our regional priorities be?
The models of progressive and discriminated use of force were developed in Anglo-Saxon countries, and their general policy is an instrumental use of force. They do not put into question whether law enforcement should use force or not, but how to use it most efficiently. We could roughly compare it to the issue of fertilizers in agriculture, there is an optimum use of fertilizers beyond which you can exhaust the soil. So it is with use of force. It must be tightly regulated by clearly defined protocols so as to lead to the optimum submission of their targets, while costing the police as little as possible. This rationalist approach is not as common in Latin America, where, on the one hand the police has been left to its own devices by those in charge of public policies, and, on the other,  punishment dispensed by police has very clear symbolic meaning.

Can you point out examples of procedures for use of force that have been designed according to Latin American realities, cultures and settings?

Norms guiding police operations in Latin America are written in terms derived from formal and legal idioms, especially when it pertains to arrests made under warrants issued for penal proceedings or for interrogations. In this respect, what prevails is a narrow interpretation of the use of force: it supposes that it is only used for arresting a suspect or for the coercion implied by detention under police custody. There is an excess of generic clauses on the protection of human rights, that, however, do little to elucidate the many variables that come into play in situations of confrontations that involve police officers and citizens.

The most up-to-date police departments are now begining to adopt training manuals on the discriminate and progressive use of force based on Anglo-Saxon models. This is probably based on the understanding that if use of force must only be resorted to instrumentally, then it is to be used only for universal goals. However the police forces that adopt such manuals do not necessarily put them into practice, either because they lack specific training, or because they are seen as mere rituals for adapting the police for a new world. I believe this is very important for the exchanging information on experiences, and for evaluations, so that uniform methodologies are adopted among a number of countries. It is nevertheless still a delicate topic, it is hard to get data on how these experiments were put into practice because police corporations tend to be closed institutions.

More civilians die in confrontations with the police in Latin America than in the United States. Is this because there are more confrontations in Latin America, or because the type of confrontation is more violent?

I have argued that Latin American citizens offer much more resistance, and are less submissive to the police, for a number of reasons, amongst them we could highlight associations between groups, distrust in the power to coerce held by the state and the police forces, and the lack deployment, on the part of the police, of highly dissuasive actions to prevent the rapid escalation of confrontations, that would guarantee a quick and preemptive submission of citizens to police coercion.

One of the current issues in Latin America is violent crime that we call “pandillaje” (gangs). Is there to your knowledge, a set of proceedings of use of force specifically designed for dealing with armed, under-age youths? What would such a strategy look like?

It is hard to envision a specific protocol on use of force addressing armed youths, although studies show that police officers are particularly careful when dealing with youths due to the special protection they are given in the judicial system - given of course, that all other factors are equal such as respect, prestige or the power to stake social claims. There are also reports that accuse the police of applying severe physical punishment on youths, in which the police try to mask signs of violence that could be picked up by a forensic doctor, leading eventually to legal proceedings against the officers involved. It has also been noted that police officers have certain bargaining power on whether or how to administer corporal punishment, and they have also been known to delegate this power of punishment to the victims of juvenile aggression, an act that I could describe as a situational concession of the power to punish.

Because of their rebellious nature, youths are a sector of the population that is particularly at risk of being targeted with use of force. Other factors in play are their immaturity, that makes them use firearms unthinkingly, the fact that they are not autonomous as a group and that they have no significant social support that would confer on them status and power to make demands backed by social support. This leads me to argue that instead of coming up with a separate protocol for the use of force, we need greater flexibility for implementing the corresponding protocol, especially with the goal of reducing the amount of force being applied, once things escalate, so as not to reach “the point of no return”. 

Which are the factors that most commonly result in the use of force by police officers?

The current literature suggests that there are a few key variables, among them: aggressive behavior or verbal abuse during an encounter with the police, an escalation of the confrontation in close quarters, situations in which there is confusion concerning the identity of undercover officers, police officers who are too young or immature, and the poder de reclamo or the power of complaint on the part of the citizen, that is to say, how much social prestige, or moral respectability the suspect carries.  Many of these factors have to do with uncertainty, that is, they have to do with the how much of a challenge it is for an  officer to anticipate a quick and effective solution for the encounter, although, of course, such variables are probably at work in encounters in which police violence was not premeditated and was not a goal from the beginning. This is very different from cases of extrajudicial killings or deaths that result from ill treatment or captivity.
How far do prejudices determine an officer's decision to shoot? In Rio de Janeiro, for example, there are those researchers who say that  police officers are more predisposed to shooting at individuals if, under tension, the encounter takes place in a shantytown.

The expressions of the use of force as pertaining to social settings or ethnicity are complex. The literature on the use of excessive force by police officers on blacks in the United States points to the perception of threat as a plausible explanation, due to high rates of violence in segregated neighborhoods. This would be compatible with the notion that the shantytown is, in itself, a dangerous environment, regardless of the appearance or the social status of those living there.
 If we are discussing individuals, there is the crucial aspect of moral judgments passed on the suspect: the lower the suspect's social standing, the less deliberation there will be on whether to use force, and the very same local group can reinforce in the police officer a propension to use excessive force. But, in my view, the power of “reclamo social” social complaint (that is not necessarily linked to social-economic status, but to the capability of mobilizing influences and “palancas” causes) is an important component in the decision to apply greater force.

Police officers often complain that it is difficult to calculate quickly, when highly stressed and in very dangerous situations, the convenience of whether or not to use force and at what intensity. Is it possible to train them so that they take better decisions in such circumstances?

There are police departments that have audio-visual simulation units that train officers to decide when and how to apply force in escalating confrontations. These exercises are usually limited to the use of guns however, so that it is not very useful for a discriminate use of force, such simulations tend to stress the use of guns as a lethal weapon, while the instruction given is: once an officer is forced to unhoslter his gun, use it and point it directly at the center of the body mass so that the assailant will be neutralized. I believe these simulators are far too simple and fail to cover the various situations and instruments that the police has available.

Many officers see little use, for example, for the billy club, but that is because they have not been trained to use it. Effective training must incorporate a detailed list of the various the situations that officers are likely to be met with, that can vary greatly depending on the social environment and culture they are in. It is important to stress that, on the one hand, officers must be alert to support their peers, on the other, there is no situation no matter how much it has escalated, that can not be de-escalated making it possible the use of less force. The ultimate rule is the protection or preservation of human life above all else, so that lethal force can only be used in its defense or preservation. There is still a long way ahead in this respect.

How is the chain of responsibility structured regarding the improper use of force in Latin America? Have such mechanisms been able to stop the excessive use of force (guns) by police officers? How could this be improved?

The lack of clearly defined protocols for use of force includes the absence of reports and controls on events involving the use of firearms or other equipment that is potentially harming once implanted.

Strict police departments require officers to fill out forms describing the reason they are requesting to use a gun, and the circumstances that justify its use, especially when it is used, independently of its consequences.

Things are much more lax in Latin America. There are cases in which it is not only permissible but required that police officers buy their own ammunition, or it is permissible that they buy additional guns for personal use, and often no ballistics records are kept, nor are there any inventories of guns being used, making firearms use promiscuous. If shots are fired, generally no reports are filed. On the other hand, there are jurisprudential criteria, such as in the case of Venezuela that allow for the interpretation of certain actions, such as shooting at a car that flees under the presumption that criminals are in flight. If we add to this scenario, an accommodating internal supervision of police behavior in day to day life, we will see the conditions set that favor uncontrolled behavior. All this adds to a culture of tolerance and acceptance as natural towards the use of extreme force on the part of the police.

Societies with high levels of violence tend to be more tolerant of excessive use of force by the police. How does that come into play when the population demands security, while it also has its own view of excessive force?

There does effectively seem to be a correlation between levels of violence in society and levels of police violence, which is not surprising, considering that the police is also a part of society and is subject to its demands, pressures, requirements and judgments that tend to accept violent crime fighting as appropriate in face of violent crime.  The police seems to know full well how to adapt to the levels of institutional and collective tolerance to violence. Comparative studies have shown that more effective measures are implemented to allow for informed consent, citizen discussion of the use of force, and that “sensible recommendations” carry more weight in societies with lower rates of violent crime. The most immediate policies in this respect are the effective control of firearms among civilians, police training in discriminating and progressive use of force, these measures must be applied simultaneously, so as to consolidate the state monopoly on armed force.

The quality of the interaction between the police and the community seems to be one of the key aspects to improve the use of force. How can this relation be improved?

Much has been said about communities as key factor and the need for the police to have the support of the community. But it is not that simple, since there are many communities and in each of them a variety of actors with diverging interests. If in some sense there is the so-called community police to help conflicting regimes find more peaceful avenues, legal or not, but with institutional recognition. In this sense it would work as an instance for mediation. This model however, cannot be made universal for all the police services, because there are many different typos of offenses and there are those offenders in criminal organizations who challenge the very power of the state.

How do you see Rio de Janeiro’s Police Pacification Units (Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora)?

The UPPs are still very new in Rio, they were created by decree in early 2009 and their results should be evaluated before any opinions proffered. On the other hand, according to the Decree 41.650, it calls for “specialized and technically trained troops to take on the role of pacification and maintenance of order in needy communities” which suggests that, apart from any risks its members may be running, that they act like “tactical operations” teams, to expel (or to root out) other illegitimate forces such as drug traffickers or paramilitary forces, and in this sense it is hard to imagine what kind of capillary conflict resolution could be carried out. It could be a label that hides behind it a symbolic and highly visible performance of the Military Police, so as to create images of “security and control” of urban spaces that had been taken away from the state in many of the poorest urban areas in the nation. 

Photos: Rodrigues Moura