The confrontations between the crime organization Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and the Military Police in 2012

routine and crisis in crime control in the state of São Paulo, Brazil

Abstract

In the second half of 2012, in the state of São Paulo, there was an unusual increase in homicide rate, contrary to the decade-long drop trend.
In São Carlos, in the interior of the state, at least 18 people were killed with execution characteristics between September and October 2012. This sequence
of homicides, atypical in relation to the city’s history, began with the execution of a military police officer during slack and ended with a slaughter of 7 crack
addicts. Such a scenario of violence was also perceived in other cities of the state in the same period. The paper will analyze the possible relations between
the homicide of this police officer and the slaughter in São Carlos, as well as the relationship between the local scenario and the state context of violence in
2012. The hypothesis is that when the routine relations between military police and Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) reach limits considered “unjust” by
the PCC, they set in motion mechanisms of “war” between these two actors, characterized by repertories of violence (attacks on public assets – like police
stations -, execution of state officers during off hours, executions and slaughters in the peripheral areas of cities). These mechanisms integrate the forms of conflict management in the so-called “public security crises” in this state, which occurred in 2001, 2006 and 2012. The conclusion is that these crisis have an important regulatory role in the relations between crime and police work, whether in open patrolling or in operations of elite groups of the military police.