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Paper short abstract

Based on ethnographic research with Rio de Janeiro military police officers, this paper examines internal counter-narratives articulated by academically socialized interlocutors that address, among other issues, racial profiling and interests that produce and sustain high levels of police lethality

Paper long abstract

This paper presents part of the research developed within a doctoral thesis, defended in 2025, which examines the naturalization of police lethality in the Polícia Militar do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro Military Police) — one of the most lethal police forces in the world. Fieldwork was conducted with military police officers through activities, projects, and long-standing collaborative relationships between the INCT-InEAC research group at Fluminense Federal University of Niterói (Rio de Janeiro) and local public security institutions. The research unfolded within a singular ethnographic context in which some interlocutors had undergone processes of academic socialization — often in sociology or anthropology — and actively mobilized representations, counter-narratives, and reflexive perspectives on policing practices. As the interlocutors themselves emphasized, such perspectives are far from representative of the police force as a whole, yet they actively tension hegemonic discourses produced within public security institutions. Drawing on ethnographic data and in-depth interviews, the paper examines and discusses these counter-narratives from within the police, foregrounding the viewpoints of those who perform policing as a daily practice. These narratives critically address, among other issues, racial profiling, the historically constituted roles of the Military Police in Brazil, and the interests at stake — at multiple levels — that in practice guide, sustain, and endemically reproduce a public security system marked by extraordinarily high levels of police lethality.