Working at the Edge in the Police City

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 5 brings the reader into the immediacy of police work in Rio’s everyday security operations. The chapter dives into the routine dynamics of a civil police station to assess the defining elements in understanding the police officers’ daily frustration in losing control of effectively handling Rio’s public security problematics—which ultimately leads to acts of violence as Foucauldian sovereign power. The chapter provides ethnographic material within a police station in which the author accompanied police officers during their day and night shifts. The insights into the world of ordinary policing before, during, and after the mega-events are telling in terms of how the promises of the host city’s public security are not at all reflected among those who are at the forefront of Rio’s urban conflict. Examining the militarized civil police Special Forces shows how daily war-like activities spark distinct everyday emotions such as adrenaline rush, frustration, and pleasure, and upset in practice the rationales of static and technology-based event security models.