Local mobilization led to community policing in Bahia

The peace initiative was born out of a public security crisis. For the last two years, João Paulo dos Santos, 21 years old, and the narrator of this story, has been one of the coordinators of the “youth and the understanding of violence” initiative, run by the Salvador's Integration and Mobilization Commission of the Residents of the Itapagipe Peninsula (CAMMPI in Portuguese).

“The Peninsula was seen as a violent, dangerous place. We showed that the violence is a result of other factors, and that our community is also a victim,” said João paulo, the young community activist.

Born officially July of 1999, CAMMPI’s first seeds were planted back in 1997 when the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) launched a project to foster sustainable development in the region.

Based on this initiative, groups from civil society in the region reached out to each other, creating a network and setting up common goals split along five lines of action: health and social welfare, culture and information, youth and the discussion of violence, employment and income, and the environment.

The challenge of peaking youth homicide rates

“We organized a course in 2003 for the Military Police and community to discuss each others’ rights and responsibilities,” João Paulo recalls. The course’s main objective was to deal with youth homicide in the Itagibe Peninsula. But the problem exploded in 2004, when the city of Salvador suffered record-high youth homicide rates. Most of the suspects of those killings were members of exterminations squads linked to the Military Police.

“After hearing the news, the community came together to consider the immediate issue as well as the root causes. Even the police were reflecting on their actions,” João Paulo added. According to him, the solid and honest relationship being developed between the local population and the police, although it remains a work in progress, was crucial for this dialogue to take place.

“Today residents can question the police’s local actions, and propose the kind of policing they want to see.” João Paulo explains, adding “the community says what kind of police it wants, and the police say what they expect from the local residents.”

Breaking the paradigms and changing how the community saw the police, and how it was seen by the police were decisive factors for keeping dialogue open.

On the other hand, the police took important steps to undo its brutal image and start building a cooperative relationship with the residents of the region instead of acting solely through repression. “The whole perspective on our relationship with the military police changed. Before, we were seen merely as the accused, now we also have a role in the decisions,” João Paulo explained.

Security policies must not be implemented in isolation

First proposed by the UNDP, the communities on the peninsula and the town halls together created a reference plan with goals for 2007, presenting it to the state governor. Two of the keystones are continuous training courses for the Military Police and the creation of a civil security council to act as an ombudsman.

“The council would be made up of community institutions like residents’ associations, and including local civil society groups,” João Paulo explained. The councils should meet regularly, as well as follow and monitor public security and law enforcement locally .

Despite these successes, João Paulo stressed that basic actions are also needed to make structural changes. He concluded that, “the focus of our action is raise awareness in the state that security policies by themselves will not suffice, they need to be implemented in concert with education, health and environmental policies as well.”

Read Further: (In Portuguese) www.cammpi.org.br

Translated by Catherine Griffith