corruption

On calmer reflection, it occurred to me that some people might have walked away from my last post with the impression that I am constantly dodging bullets. That is not the case — Flamengo is actually quite safe as neighborhoods here go, which is saying something, although not quite as much as if I said it about, say, Fairfield. Or Iowa City. Or Ann Arbor. Or practically anywhere — and oops, now I’m ruining my effort to convince you all that really, it was an isolated and VERY unusual incident. It was. I am not, repeat not, living in the middle of the Gaza Strip, or even the Rio equivalent, and the reason that it made such a big impression on me is precisely because that kind of thing doesn’t happen very often around here.

And now here I am feeling kind of guilty about what I’m about to post, because I hate it when people only comment on the bad stuff in Rio and I hope that after 9 months here I have at least a slightly more nuanced view than that. But when I’m feeling pessimistic, it’s hard not to feel that a “nuanced” view of crime kind of just means the eventual sad realization that really, no one looking out for you. Including — no, especially — the police.

In some ways it’s hard to blame them. Pay for police officers is abysmal, which means that Rio’s finest often live in favelas and must struggle to make ends meet. And it gets even more complicated and scary, because Rio’s armed drug gangs are usually based in the favelas, and as you can imagine, they are not too fond of police officers. This means that being a police officer can be incredibly dangerous — both on the job and off. According to what I’ve heard, there are a couple of ways to deal with this: either you go undercover and pray no one realizes you’re a cop, or you come to some sort of “agreement” with the local Comando.

In other words, it’s pretty common knowledge that Rio’s uneasy detente between police and traficantes is maintained through a fairly significant and complicated scheme of mutual backscratching. That definitely isn’t my area of expertise. What I have experienced firsthand, though, is the other way that Rio’s cops make ends meet.

I hate having to write stuff like this about Rio. And even more than that, I hate that a friend can tell me a story like this one of being strip-searched and threatened by the police when leaving Rocinha last night and I’m not even surprised. I guess I was shocked the first time this happened to a friend (an American who got taken to an ATM by 2 cops and shaken down for R$1000 in February) and upset the second time (4 friends were visiting from the US and we got “pulled over” — while walking — and searched). Now I’m just mad.

Especially because — and I say this from my own experience, which wasn’t even that bad — being targeted by people with authority like that produces a really singular feeling of helplessness. Forfeiting $100 worth of perfume, or paying a “tax” of R$1000 is bad, but the alternatives are so frighteningly uncertain (especially if you’re unfamiliar with the legal system). If I call my friend who’s a lawyer, will the cops go away or will they slip some drugs into your purse so they can “find” them later? At best, you’d be taking a chance, and if you filed a complaint, you’d set yourself up for months of hassle and discouraging odds of success. It’s the feeling that no matter what you do, the deck is so stacked against you that your only way out is to play directly into someone else’s game.