When she started her work, the common understanding was that South American countries had not reformed their police forces during their transition to democracy, because so much more had to be done. In that version of the story, fixing the police simply wouldn’t have been a priority.
But when she dug a little deeper, she found that there was a lot of public demand for better security and crime fighting, and often a lot of anger in communities affected by police brutality. The police had not been overlooked: they were protected.
The police were politically powerful because they could selectively withdraw their services, increasing crime and disorder, provoking anger from elected officials. They were also often well-connected and able to lobby effectively to protect their own interests. That meant conflict with the police was costly to politicians, who tended to avoid it, leaving police forces and practices largely unchanged.
But there was a specific, hard-to-achieve set of conditions that, if met, would lead to police reform, Gonzalez found. In short, her formula was this: scandal + public unity + credible political opposition = reform.
The series began with a scandal or crisis that led public opinion to unite a majority of people in favor of reform, she wrote in her book “Authoritarian Police in Democracy.” If there was also a real electoral threat from political opponents calling for reform, that could be enough to convince leaders to take action to avert their competition.
In Argentina and Colombia, that series led to major reforms after high-profile police killings.
But when even one of those elements was missing, the status quo continued. In Brazil, the Carandiru massacre was certainly a scandal, and there was quite a strong political opposition that to some extent joined the criticism. But public opinion on this was fragmented: Gonzalez quoted from polls of the time that about a third of Brazilians agreed with the way the police had handled the situation. The second element of the series, convergence of public opinion, was missing. The result: no reform.
