Controlling Protest: Repertoire, Strategies, and Lessons from Policing the 2013-2014 Protests Cycle

Abstract

Between 2013 and 2014, peaking in June 2013, Porto Alegre was the stage for a set of protests characterized by heterogeneous claims, groups, and tactical interactions between police and protesters. Based on this case, this paper aims to analyze the way repertoire and strategies for policing demonstrations are maintained or transformed during a cycle of protests. Through an analysis of protest events on newspapers and interviews with police officers, we used the the relational perspective of contentious politics theory to identify four mechanisms that shaped the learning process of police forces during the cycle: the problematization of policing repertoire; the identification of alternatives; tactical experimentation; the incorporation of changes. These transformations resulted in the expansion of the use of police monitoring tactics, allied to the strategy of anticipating protesters’ actions.

contentious politics; policing; protest cycle; police learning

Resumo

Entre 2013 e 2014, com o ápice em junho de 2013, Porto Alegre foi palco de um conjunto de protestos, caracterizados pela heterogeneidade de reivindicações, de grupos mobilizados e de interações táticas entre policiais e manifestantes. O objetivo deste artigo é analisar, com base nesse caso, como o repertório e as estratégias de policiamento de protestos mantêm-se ou transformam-se durante um ciclo de protestos. A investigação foi realizada por meio da análise de eventos de protesto em jornais e de entrevistas com agentes policiais. Sob a perspectiva relacional da teoria do confronto político, foram identificados quatro mecanismos que conformam o processo de aprendizagem vivenciado pelas forças policiais durante o ciclo: problematização do repertório de policiamento; identificação de alternativas; experimentação tática; incorporação das mudanças. As transformações resultaram na ampliação do uso de táticas policiais de monitoramento, combinada à estratégia de antecipação à ação dos manifestantes.

confronto político; policiamento; ciclo de protestos; aprendizagem policial

Résumé

Entre 2013 et 2014, avec un pic en juin 2013, Porto Alegre a été le théâtre d’une série de protestations, caractérisées par l’hétérogénéité des revendications, des groupes mobilisés et des interactions tactiques entre policiers et manifestants. L’objectif de cet article est d’analyser, sur la base de ce cas, comment le répertoire et les stratégies de maintien de l’ordre lors des protestations se maintiennent ou se transforment au cours d’un cycle de protestations. L’enquête a été menée à travers l’analyse des événements de protestation dans les journaux et des entretiens avec des agents de police. Dans la perspective relationnelle de la théorie du conflit politique, quatre mécanismes ont été identifiés qui façonnent le processus d’apprentissage vécu par les forces de police tout au long du cycle : problématisation du répertoire de maintien de l’ordre ; identification d’alternatives ; expérimentation tactique ; incorporation des changements. Ces transformations ont abouti à une augmentation de l’utilisation de tactiques de surveillance policière, combinée à la stratégie d’anticipation des actions des manifestants.

conflit politique; maintien de l’ordre; cycle de protestations; apprentissage policier

Resumen

Entre 2013 y 2014, teniendo como punto álgido junio de 2013, Porto Alegre fue escenario de un conjunto de protestas, caracterizadas por la heterogeneidad de las reivindicaciones de grupos movilizados y de interacciones tácticas entre la policía y los manifestantes. El objetivo de este artículo es analizar, a partir de ese caso, de qué forma el repertorio y las estrategias de vigilancia de las protestas se mantuvieron o transformaron durante el ciclo de protestas. La investigación fue realizada por medio del análisis de eventos de protesta en revistas y entrevistas con agentes policiales. A partir de la perspectiva relacional de la teoría de la confrontación política, se identificaron cuatro mecanismos que conforman el proceso de aprendizaje vivido por las fuerzas policiales durante el ciclo: problematización del repertorio de vigilancia; identificación de alternativas; experimentación táctica; incorporación de los cambios. Las transformaciones resultaron en la ampliación del uso de tácticas policiales y de seguimiento, combinado a la estrategia de anticipación a la acción de los manifestantes.

confrontación política; vigilancia; ciclo de protestas; aprendizaje policial

Introduction

On October 4, 2012, at Largo Glênio Peres, located in downtown Porto Alegre, the inflatable figure Fuleco, an armadillo that was the official mascot of the 2014 FIFA World Cup held in Brazil, triggered a confrontation between police forces and protesters. At the time, hundreds of protesters were in front of the City Hall carrying out the Defesa Pública da Alegria (Public Defense of Joy), an act against the privatization of public spaces in the city. Although the protest assumed a festive format, with artistic performances, municipal guards protected the City Hall building, and approximately twenty military police officers¹ stood in the proximity of the World Cup mascot. At the end of the event, some protesters approached the inflatable figure and were physically repressed with batons and less lethal instruments (tear gas bombs and rubber bullets) by military police. The confrontation resulted in nearly twenty protesters, three reporters and one police officer injured, as well as six people arrested. The action of the Military Brigade (Brigada Militar – BM)² was heavily criticized by the protesters (Oliveira et al., 2012).

On June 12, 2014, almost two years after the ‘inflatable armadillo episode’, a new protest event led by the Bloco de Lutas pelo Transporte Público (Coalition for Public Transport) brought together between 500 and 1,000 protesters opposed to the hosting of the World Cup in downtown Porto Alegre. A BM helicopter flew over the entire route of the march, recording it with an aerial imaging system. At a certain point, protesters tried to march to the Fan Fest, a festive event promoted by FIFA and sponsors, but got blocked by police barriers. In order to prevent the protesters from approaching, military police used less lethal instruments and dismantled the act. Due to the vandalism of public properties, between six and fifteen protesters were arrested after being identified through aerial imaging footage. Commenting on the police tactics used during the protest, the then deputy commissioner of the BM told the newspaper Zero Hora:

Our approach is to accompany the demonstration, to try to avoid depredations, but if there are any, we monitor those who are depredating, obeying the guideline of not attacking the entire demonstration. Some of the people who were arrested were first monitored, filmed and then, during the dispersal, we made the arrest. [...] We are adopting the same procedure as in 2013. [...] Our approach is to maintain the physical integrity of the protesters and of the people who are not in the demonstration (Copa nas ruas, 2014, emphasis added).

We can point out some differences between both scenes: while in the inflatable armadillo event, BM mostly repressed people physically; in the 2014 protest against the World Cup, they used new technologies to monitor and gather information. In parallel, their official speech evoked the memory of 2013, defending the selectivity in the arrest of protesters and the protection of people’s physical integrity. The two scenes above are part of a broader temporal process – a protest cycle,³ as outlined below – that spans a range of demonstrations and protests, including the so-called Jornadas de Junho (June Journeys) of 2013.⁴ Throughout this period, the state of Rio Grande do Sul was governed by Tarso Genro, of the Workers’ Party (PT), and the presence of a progressive party in government tended to increase tensions (and criticism) regarding decisions made in the policing of protests.⁵

This study argues that the set of acts that took place between 2013 and 2014 is a protest cycle, i.e., ‘phase of heightened conflict across the social system, with rapid diffusion of collective action from more mobilized to less mobilized sectors’ (Tarrow, 2009: 182). The acts in Porto Alegre were led by the Bloco de Lutas pelo Transporte Público, a heterogeneous group comprising students, young people from political parties and anarchist groups (Muhale, 2014) – although in June 2013, other groups joined the protests. Based on the literature, we also claim that this protests cycle, which peaked in June 2013, presents several innovations in the repertoire of confrontation performed in the demonstrations (Alonso, Mische, 2016; Fernandes, 2016; Silva, 2016). This article, from the perspective of contentious politics (McAdam, Tarrow, Tilly, 2001), focuses on analyzing the changes in the repertoire of action and strategies of the police forces.

Brazilian literature has been addressing the policing of the protest events of 2013 and 2014 – a number of studies examine the identity and repertoire of protesters engaged in direct and disruptive actions, mainly groups using black bloc tactics (Araújo, 2015; Grote, 2018; Oliva, 2017; Pinheiro Jr., 2016). Other studies focus on the legal and/or juridical forms of protest control, by referring to the ‘criminalization’ of social movements (Almeida, 2020b; Amaral et al., 2017; Freitas, 2017). In addition, some studies investigate the repertoire of police forces on the streets during protest events (Fernandes, Câmara, 2018; Luz, 2016; Silva Jr., 2015). Finally, others analyze the monitoring and vigilantism of protesters and protest events (Albuquerque, 2016; Fernandes, 2020a; Fonseca, 2017).

Still, studying the policing of protests is an evolving agenda in the Brazilian academic scene (Almeida, 2020a). We have identified a gap specifically in the national literature regarding longitudinal analyses that address continuities and transformations of the protest policing repertoire.⁶ In order to indicate ways to address this gap, the main objective of this article is to answer the following research question based on the case of Porto Alegre (2013-2014): how do police repertoires and strategies remain the same or change during a protests cycle?

Dialoguing with the literature and from a relational perspective, we argue that protests cycle may lead to the development of a police learning process (Otten, Boin, Torre, 2001). Accordingly, we share the perspective synthesized by Maciel and Machado (2021:229):

series of confrontations are critical circumstances that escalate the threats perceived by political and social elites and accelerate political processes through intense state responses to protest. The intense interaction between protesters and authorities generates learning and interactive changes in contentious and institutional repertoires.

According to previous studies, police learning tends to focus on solving problems (Waddington, 1998; 1999; 2003; Waddington, King, 2005) that arise in the tactical interaction between police forces and protesters in political scenes (Della Porta, Tarrow, 2012). The innovations resulting from these lessons can be incorporated into police knowledge on how to control protests, impacting decision-making in later events (de Fazio, 2007; Della Porta and Reiter, 1998). In the relevant case, we identified that the events of the protests cycle worked as a kind of police ‘experimentation lab’, culminating in a learning process and in the incorporation of the tactical changes observed in the 2014 events. One of the central contributions of this article to the literature is to explain and to analyze the mechanisms that characterize the police learning process during the protests cycle.

In order to develop this reasoning, we have divided the article into sections. In the first section, we summarize a relational model for the study of protest policing; in the second section, we present the methodological approach that was developed and applied; in the third, we analyze the empirical case; in the concluding remarks, we summarize the main findings and contributions of this article.

A relational perspective on protest policing

International literature on protest policing is a well-established academic sub-field, producing studies on the interactions between the agents promoting protest events (social movement organizations and activists) and the agents responsible for controlling protests (centrally, police forces) for about forty years (Earl, 2003; 2011). Although a considerable part of this literature initially adopted a macrosociological perspective, connecting policing to the structure of political opportunities and to the characteristics of the political regime in the contexts analyzed (Della Porta, Reiter, 1998), recently – following trends in the field of social movements (McAdam, Tarrow, Tilly; 2001) -– a relational perspective has become more prominent, concerned with explaining how the relations between police forces and activists mutually transform the practices, identities and organizational processes of agents and institutions involved in these disputes.

Accordingly, Della Porta and Reiter (1998:10) developed an analytical model to explain protest policing. The model encompasses both relatively stable variables (police culture and the configuration of police organizations and power) and, at a less stable level, police interactions with public opinion, local government and activists, as well as police knowledge on those dimensions. The authors emphasize that the history of the relationship with protesters, activists and social movement organizations tends to shape police action in the present, which depends on the police perception of the political groups that lead the protests. Empirical studies argue that groups perceived as more vulnerable (Wisler, Giugni, 1999) or more challenging to political elites (Soule, Davenport, 2009) are likely to be preferential targets of harsher police tactics. A further relevant factor is how groups act: disruptive tactics tend to be responded to with less tolerance, while innovative forms of action may surprise police forces and be responded to with tactical adaptations to regain control over collective action (Della Porta, Atak, 2015; Della Porta, Tarrow, 2012; Ellefsen, 2016; Wahlström, 2007).

Under this theoretical approach, the perceptions and actions of police forces are mediated by the category ‘police knowledge’. Della Porta and Reiter (1998:22) define police knowledge as ‘police’s perception of their role and of the external reality’. Police knowledge is a kind of incorporation of the other dimensions in the police officer, acting as a variable that connects structure and action. Moreover, police knowledge is not a static variable, involving reciprocal adaptation to previous encounters with protesters, i.e., confrontations situations may result in ‘lessons learned’ by police forces. (Otten, Boin, Torre, 2001).

Police officers act according to stereotypes constructed about activist groups, such as by distinguishing between ‘good’ versus ‘bad’, ‘professionals’ versus ‘genuine’, ‘contained’ versus ‘transgressive’ protesters (Della Porta, Atak, 2015; De Fazio, 2007). The way police officers categorize crowds is also relevant: Atak (2015) and Hoggett and Stott (2010) state, for instance, that when police perception is that crowds are dangerous and irrational masses, their responses to acts tend to be confrontational. A further constitutive element of police knowledge is the perception of the role of the police force itself, i.e., the police ‘self-image’ or ‘philosophy’ (Winter, 1998). Winter (1998) differentiates between two ideal types: the Staatspolizei (police forces that primarily serve the interest of the state) and the Bürgerpolizei (police forces that primarily focus on defending the interests of citizens). The first type tends to adopt more severe and rights-restricting tactics.

Despite being the theoretical starting point for this analysis, Della Porta and Reiter’s (1998) proposal does not explore in depth the proposition of a model that explains the mechanisms behind police knowledge development. While acknowledging that police officers act as ‘street-level bureaucrats’ (Lipsky, 1980), we believe that Waddington’s contributions (1999; 2003) are important. He states that police strategies to control public order generally take into account two types of problems: on-the-job troubles and in-the-job troubles. The first refers to everyday and operational problems, such as preventing people from challenging police authority, arresting a suspect, preventing injuries in operations, etc.; the second refers to the relationship between police officers and the bureaucracy of police institutions (for example, supervisory bodies) and other actors and institutions in the political arenas (media, governments, among others). Work-related problems involve the very legitimacy/competence of police institutions in society, which can lead to ‘defensive’ actions aimed at protecting the institution’s ‘image’ (Waddington, 1999:130). Therefore, we propose that a relational perspective, at the level of the interaction between police officers and activists, should connect the model of Della Porta, Reiter (1998) to the contributions of Waddington (1999; 2003) for identifying and analyzing the mechanisms that shape the police learning process during the protests cycle. The proposed method is synthetized as follows:

Figure 1
: Analytical model

Based on the analysis developed using this model, we expect the article to make a contribution on two main fronts. Firstly, we intend to contribute to the structuring of the incipient field of research on protest policing in Brazil (Maciel, Machado, 2021; Machado, Maciel, Souza, 2021), based on a study focused on analyzing the transformations of the police repertoire during a protests cycle. Secondly, we aim to contribute to the construction of a theory that moves forward in the analysis of the learning mechanisms involved in policing protests. Emphasizing here the specificity of critical junctures produced in protests cycle for the police learning process.

Data and methods

This article aims at explaining, based on the case of Porto Alegre (2013-2014), how the police repertoire and strategies are maintained or transformed during a protests cycle. In order to achieve such general purpose, two specific objectives were established: a) mapping the police tactics adopted during the protests cycle and how they varied over time; b) identifying and analyzing the causal mechanisms that explain the continuities and/or transformations in the police repertoire and strategies.

Porto Alegre has been chosen due to two central factors. On the one hand, the city was a paradigmatic case of the 2013 protests cycle: Porto Alegre has been the stage for protests against the increase in bus fares since January of that year, and the fare increase was revoked in April (Preliminary Injunction..., 2013) and of massive protests in June.⁷ On the other hand, the debate between 2013 and 2014 regarding police actions during protests was central in Porto Alegre. It was mainly due to the violence used by police officers during the June 2013 protests, and to the acquisition of new policing technologies for the 2014 World Cup. It should be noted that, since our aim is to build a theory on the causal mechanisms of the learning process that can explain continuities and/or transformations in the police repertoire, the case of Porto Alegre has been adopted as the empirical basis for this construction. Future comparative studies will be required to test the possibility of generalizing to other cases.⁸

The two-year period (2013-2014) chosen also has implications: on the one hand, it constitutes a limit for the analysis of larger-scale processes of change; however, international literature indicates that a protests cycle is favorable for relatively rapid changes in the repertoires of confrontation and policing (Maciel, Machado, 2021; Otten, Boin, Torre, 2001; Tarrow, 2009). Analyzing the extent to which these changes become permanent is also a question that requires further research.

In order to achieve the first specific purpose, a protest event analysis (PEA) (Koopmans, Rucht, 2002; Olzak, 1989) was carried out on all the events organized by the Bloco de Lutas between 2013 and 2014. Data collection was based on journalistic material from the news published in the newspapers Zero Hora and Sul21. Data was collected from the newspapers by searching for the expression Bloco de Luta and similar terms. The reason for choosing two newspapers (each with different target audiences) was to control journalistic bias in the selection of the events reported and in the coverage of the events – a central procedure for strengthening the credibility of the database when it comes to journalistic sources (Earl et al., 2004). The search resulted in 130 publications (93 from Zero Hora and 37 from Sul21), covering 37 protest events (26 in 2013 and 11 in 2014). In the selection of news items, ‘protests’ were understood as events carried out by collective actors to express claims and seek to persuade authorities and/or public opinion about the legitimacy of these claims (Della Porta, Diani, 2006; Taylor, Van Dyke, 2004).

The news stories were categorized according to police tactics, i.e., the units of action of the police forces (e.g., use of tear gas bombs, arrests, etc.). Police repertoire consists of the set of tactics available and effectively mobilized by the police force in response to protest events. And police strategy is the combination of tactics for a particular purpose (e.g., dispersal, anticipation, stigmatization). The recurrent and systematic use of certain strategies constitutes a policing model (e.g., escalating forces – Della Porta and Reiter, 1998) (Fernandes, 2020b). It is important to point out that, although the design of this research allows for the identification of police tactics, repertoire and strategies in the case studied, we do not intend to analyze the conformation or modification of policing models (since such an analysis would require the coverage of a broader time span of protests).

Table 1
: Concepts and Definitions of Tactics, Repertoire, Strategy and Protest Policing Model

Concept	Definition
Protest policing tactics	Police action units in response to protest events
Protest policing repertoire	Set of tactics adopted by police forces in response to protest events in a given historical period (scripts or ‘action prototypes’).
Protest policing strategy	Combination of tactics for a specific strategic purpose in response to protest events.
Protest policing model	Recurrent and systematic use of certain police strategies in response to protest events, resulting in a pattern.

Source: produced by the author based on Fernandes (2020b).

In order to meet the second specific purpose, we attempted to analyze the problems (Waddington, 1999; 2003) faced by the police during the protests cycle, as well as the police knowledge (Della Porta, Reiter, 1998) developed during interactions with activists, based on interviews with agents involved in public security institutions. The interviews were conducted according to a semi-structured script and were divided into three blocks of questions, addressing: questions about the interviewees’ backgrounds; questions about the institutional structure and resources of the interviewee’s institution; questions about strategies and tactics for controlling and repressing collective action, specifically the tactics adopted in the 2013 and 2014 protests.

The search for informants followed the ‘snowball’ technique. A total of 13 agents were interviewed between 2013 and 2016, covering a wide range of institutional ties: Military Police of Rio Grande do Sul (PMRS) (four interviewees), Civil Police of Rio Grande do Sul (PCRS) (four interviewees), Department of Public Security of Rio Grande do Sul (SSPRS) (three interviewees), Municipal Guard of Porto Alegre (one interviewee), and Municipal Department of Security of Porto Alegre (SMSEG) (one interviewee). The results presented here focus on the interviews conducted with military police officers, given that in Brazil, the Military Police has the prerogative to ostensibly control order on the streets, and the MPs are responsible for a considerable portion of the actions taken in response to protest events (Almeida, 2020a). It should be noted that the combination of quantitative (PEA) and qualitative (interviews) techniques makes it possible to map the actors’ practices (tactics and repertoire), as well as complementing this data with information on the actors’ perceptions and interpretations (strategies and learning mechanisms).

The continuities or changes in the police repertoire during the protests cycle were combined with an analysis of the content of the interviews (Bardin, 2010) in an attempt to identify the causal mechanisms that explain the configurations of the police repertoire. Causal mechanisms are the result of breaking down processes into smaller sets of events (Machamer, Darden, Craver, 2000). When tracing a process, the analysis of causal mechanisms means dynamically identifying and analyzing the agents (entities), and especially, their actions (activities), which relationally produce the process, phenomenon or result under study (Bennett, Checkel, 2015). In this article, such process is the police learning that unfolded between 2013 and 2014, while the causal mechanisms are the actions carried out by the agents that shape this process. The next section presents the results of the analysis.

Police lessons in the 2013-2014 repressive cycle

The 2013 and 2014 protests held by the Bloco de Lutas generally consisted of marches in the central region of Porto Alegre. During the cycle, the groups present, the demands and the number of protesters varied. Identifying these variations allowed the cycle to be broken down into four periods: January to May 2013 (P1); June 2013 (P2); July to December 2013 (P3); and January to June 2014 (P4).

Between January and May 2013 (P1), the protests led by Bloco de Lutas had a relatively low number of participants (less than a thousand per event), and their central demand was a reduction in public transport fares, culminating in the revocation of the fare increase in April (Preliminary injunction..., 2013). In June 2013 (P2), there was a considerable increase in the number of protesters on the streets – between 10 and 20 thousand participants per event – with heterogeneous groups. In addition to Bloco de Lutas, groups of different ideologies (including conservatives) were also present, and their demands multiplied: the demilitarization of the police, the fight against corruption, opposition to PEC (Proposed Amendment to the Constitution) 37, among others. From July to December 2013 (P3), the number of protesters on the streets decreased and Bloco de Lutas regained prominence, and the public transport issue returned to center stage. From January to June 2014 (P4), Bloco de Lutas continued protesting against the fare increase, again with a reduced number of protesters, but with a prevailing agenda of opposition to the hosting of the World Cup.

Previous research has demonstrated the innovation in the repertoire of activist confrontation in the period (Fernandes, 2016; Silva, 2016), but this article focuses on the identification and variation of police tactics, i.e., the actions of police forces to adapt to – and control – the actions of protesters:

Police actions between 2013 and 2014 can be categorized into three main groups: tactics for managing and monitoring protests (grey); tactics for gathering information and controlling space (variations of blue and purple); tactics for physical repression (variations of red, orange, and yellow). Graph 1 shows the frequent presence, from January to May 2013 (P1), of police management and monitoring tactics, and spatial control tactics (police barriers). Physical repression tactics were identified in only one specific protest. In June 2013 (P2), data indicates an important shift towards physical repression tactics. The use of tear gas bombs and arrests were identified in all of the June 2013 protests – of the total of 163 arrests reported in the protest events database, 147 (over 90%) occurred in the five events of June 2013 – in addition to the high frequency in the use of aggression, encirclement, and persecution of protesters.

Graph 1
: Police Action Tactics by Period

From July to December 2013 (P3), management and monitoring tactics became predominant again. Physical repression tactics have all decreased in use, as well as spatial control tactics. In the period from January to June 2014 (P4), the frequency of management and monitoring tactics remained high. Nevertheless, there were significant cases of physical repression tactics – the use of tear gas, for example, was identified in 30% of the protests during the period. This period is marked by the resumption of space control tactics and a considerable increase in the frequency of intelligence-gathering tactics – surveillance cameras, aerial imaging, helicopters.

Analyzing the entire period, the frequency of management and monitoring tactics, except for the June 2013 period, tended to remain stable. In addition, June 2013 was the period of greatest physical repression, when all the protests were repressed. In addition to the variation in the frequency of repression, the main change in repertoire occurred with regard to intelligence-gathering tactics, which only appeared in residual form during the 2013 protests and began to be incorporated into policing in 2014. In the following sections, we will try to identify which causal mechanisms explain these changes.

The Inflatable Armadillo Episode: Problematizing Policing Repertoire

First of all, we should point out that the interactions in a protests cycle are, in part, the result of historical precedents. A central aspect pointed out by the interviewees is the pattern of confrontation and repression that marks relations between police forces and protesters in the country, specifically in Rio Grande do Sul.

The inflatable armadillo episode is a paradigmatic example of this pattern. According to interviewee Fernando,⁹ ‘the relationship between the Brigade, the uniformed police and the social movements [...] has a conflicted history by nature’. Interviewee Marcos suggests that until mid-2000s, at a time when the main social movements the Brigade dealt with were related to rural issues – such as the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST – acronym in Portuguese) – which used radicalized tactics – such as land occupations – the police strategy was ‘old school’, aimed at dispersal. According to Marcos, during this period, the main guideline was: ‘Demonstrations shall be dispersed when the governments say so’. Interviewee Clóvis also says: ‘In the old days, they came with the cavalry to ‘disperse’ demonstrators, then, the riot police squads would go in, identify and arrest one or two people, if necessary, but the idea was to first demobilize the masses’ (emphasis added).

This conflictive pattern of interaction, which has already been addressed in the national literature (Azevedo, 2016; Azevedo, Nascimento, 2016; Lima, Sinhoretto, Bueno, 2015; Silva, 2011), is explained by some elements, according to the police officers interviewed. The main element is the historical construction, in Brazil, of police institutions focused on safeguarding the order of the State and not on defending citizens’ rights – a kind of police ‘self-image’ that Winter (1998) classifies as Staatspolizei. One of the strategies of this police culture is the repressive control of collective actions, which tend to be understood as ‘disturbances’ or ‘riots’ (Atak, 2015; Hoggett, Stott, 2010) led by ‘internal enemies’ (Freitas, 2017). According to interviewee Clóvis, the term adopted by BM for protest events promoted by social movements, until the mid-2000s, was ‘riot control’.

Several interviewees mentioned the inflatable armadillo episode as a turning point for the BM. At the time, at least 14 people were injured. The truculent police action was filmed by protesters using cell phones, and images portrayed were widely disseminated indicating that there was no plausible justification for the repressive action, resulting in negative response by the city’s media to the attitude of the police (Oliveira et al., 2012). Complaints about the disproportionate nature of the police action were also related to the contradiction with the ‘festive’ format of the event, which brought together artistic and cultural activities.

The interviewees’ reflections indicate that, the criticism BM received in this episode, in the context of a state government linked to a progressive party (PT), led to a crisis of legitimacy regarding the role of the police in protest events, thus creating what Waddington (1999; 2003) calls in the job troubles. The interviewees’ reflections on the conflictive history of the BM with social movements indicate the emergence, at the beginning of the cycle, of a mechanism to problematize the repressive approach of the police.¹⁰ Problematization consists of a critical evaluation of the ‘traditional’ policing repertoire as a result of legitimacy or operational problems faced by police forces.

January to May 2013: Identifying Alternatives

After the ‘traumatic’ experience of the inflatable armadillo episode, in the beginning of 2013, BM legitimacy was under threat. While the first protests of 2013, on January 21 and February 18, were characterized by the absence of confrontations between protesters and police forces, the March 27 event marked an escalation in the level of conflict on the streets, with the emergence of more disruptive actions by the protesters. Police responded to these actions with repressive tactics (Fernandes, 2016; 2020a).

On that day, hundreds of protesters gathered in front of the City Hall building and, chanting ‘the city hall is ours’ and ‘open the people’s house’, managed to break through a Municipal Guard (GM, acronym in Portuguese) barrier at the site. In response to the ‘riot’, BM police officers went to City Hall and dispersed the protesters with tear gas bombs, resulting in one demonstrator injured. Some protesters responded by throwing pieces of wood, fruit and marbles at the police. Inside the City Hall building, a protester was arrested and handcuffed by the GM and then taken to the Police Palace, to testify to the Civil Police (PC, acronym in Portuguese).After the repression of March 27, the mobilization intensified. Protests on April 1 and 4 were marked by a significant increase in the number of protesters on the streets – there were thousands of people. During these protests, there were no physical confrontations between protesters and the police, nor was there any use of physical repression tactics. The protesters continued to use disruptive tactics, mainly in the form of graffiti and depredations. The subsequent protest, on April 11, brought together around 3,000 people, and for the first time in the protests cycle, there were banners against the ‘criminalization of the movement’ as a response to the fact that protesters were being summoned to testify to the PC for acts that took place on March 27.Even though groups of protesters adopted disruptive tactics in all the protests in April 2013, police did not use physical repression. Even so, large contingents of military police monitored the protests from a distance. Not physically repressing these acts caused new legitimacy issues (Waddington, 1999; 2003) for the BM. While protesters criticized the ‘criminalization of the movement’, BM was questioned by other sectors of society for its ‘tolerant’ stance (Gonzatto, 2013). In response to the criticism, the then commander of policing in the capital attempted to hold the protesters responsible by stating that there was a radicalization of the protests: ‘the movement is escalating into violence, and the state, as a public authority, has to take action’ (Gonzatto, 2013, emphasis added).

In an attempt to contain the ‘escalation of violence’, BM adopted an official position that at the same time defended a preventive strategy, anticipating the actions of the protesters, and emphasized that the BM should respect freedom of speech and human rights. This relative ambivalence between toughening up action and recognizing the rights of the protesters sums up the problem faced by the police forces in that context. The dispute over the legitimacy of police action is expressed by interviewee Fernando, who attributes a central part of the responsibility for the emergence of conflicts to the protesters’ tactical choices:

Fernando: People might think that we take pleasure in repressing others. No. My job is not to stop people from speaking out. [...] I believe that the ways people sometimes choose are [...] I’m not going to tell you wrong. It’s just that sometimes these ‘guys’ cross the line. For example, ‘OK, do you want to block a street?’ Fine, we negotiate. You can go to the street and block it for a while. That’s fine. But please don’t throw Molotovs. What’s the point, you know? Why throwing a firecracker?

Reacting to criticism of tolerating acts of depredation, BM called a meeting to deal with the protests. The then BM deputy commander announced the guidelines for future events: before the protests, searches would be carried out with the purpose of seizing sticks, stones, and sprays in the possession of protesters. BM would also seek to establish a dialogue with activists so that the latter could inform them in advance of the route of the marches. During the protests, the new guidelines included encouraging protesters to ‘cooperate’ with the police forces, carrying out a kind of ‘self-policing’ – identifying and removing those who were responsible for destruction – and increasing the number of photographic and filming records during the protests.¹¹

By making this set of tactics explicit, a new mechanism emerged during this period: the identification of alternatives, i.e., the mapping of alternative tactics that could reduce or solve the problems caused by the ‘traditional’ repertoire. The response to crisis that had arisen since the inflatable armadillo episode, added to the protests at the beginning of 2013, was to seek forms of policing other than physical repression.

June 2013: Tactical Experiment

The period of June 2013 was marked by the amplification of the mobilizations, with massive and heterogeneous protests that brought together different groups and multiple demands. Although Bloco de Lutas continued to participate in the protests, they lost prominence. This diversification of actors and agendas on the streets was accompanied by tactical radicalization, with an escalation in the level of conflict between protesters and police forces (Fernandes, 2016; 2020a).

The image of protesters using black bloc tactics was widely covered by the media (Trezzi, 2013). Acts of property destruction were reported in all of the June protests; looting, graffiti and the use of firecrackers were seen in more than half of the protests. Physical confrontations between protesters and police forces became recurrent, and the police responded with less lethal weaponry (mainly tear gas bombs) and arrests – thus implementing ‘traditional’ repressive repertoire. The conflict level was also expressed in the intensification of disagreements between protesters themselves, mainly around the (il)legitimacy of disruptive tactics. June 2013 is interpreted by the interviewees as a ‘surprise’:

Fernando: we had experienced this in 2013, it was brutal. Just so you have an idea, everyone was taken by surprise, we, the police, the whole state, the whole public organization. (emphasis added)

Carlos: Today, the movement has no identified leadership. It’s kind of every individual for themselves. (emphasis added)

Marcos: And then there are the black blocs [...].There are people from CUT (‘Workers’ Unified Center’), and they’re all making claims at the same time, and sometimes different claims, and they even disagree with each other in their claims. [...]This whole mixture caused major problems that I think still exist today, which is a total mess. [...]The police don’t know what to do with those they arrest [...].But it’s all a bit intuitive, a bit confusing. [...].What leads to acting intuitively and dangerously... (emphasis added)

The statements above, showing the attempt by police to adapt their tactics to the characteristics of the protests, are what Waddington (1999; 2003) calls ‘in the job troubles’, in other words, the difficulties faced during operations. The interviewees’ statements indicate that the heterogeneity of the groups and tactics poses problems for controlling the public space. This diversity – together with the difficulty of identifying leaders and the mistrust between protesters and police forces – hinders the use of the negotiation strategy proposed as an alternative at the April 17 meeting discussed above.

In order to deal with the ‘surprise’ and ‘confusion’ of June 2013, BM would tactically experiment the alternatives that had been identified in the previous period. In general, June 2013 was interpreted as a kind of ‘experimentation laboratory’ by the police officers interviewed. According to interviewee Carlos, in June 2013 the police force ‘evolved’ along with the movement, in the logic of ‘coevolution’ pointed out in the literature (Della Porta, Tarrow, 2012). While in the initial protests it was not clear who the protesters were and how to deal with them, the police tried to adapt itself in order to regain control of the streets.

The experiment was based on four central strategies that combine traditional tactics and innovations: stigmatization, dispersion, tactical legitimization and anticipation. The first refers to the classification of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ protesters. At a press conference after the June 13 protest, a BM officer said that physical repression tactics were adopted after ‘acts of vandalism’ by a ‘minority’ of protesters (Atos de Vandalismo, 2013). This split between a ‘minority of vandals’ and ‘legitimate protesters’, created and reinforced by the corporate media, tended to characterize individuals who adopted black bloc tactics and/or carried anarchist symbols as ‘vandals’ (Almeida, 2020b; Maciel, Machado, 2021).¹² The literature on social movements points out that one of the central elements in the construction of police reality is the use of stereotypes (Boykoff, 2007): those who adopt more radicalized tactics and who tend to cause more control problems in policing are generally classified as ‘bad’ (Della Porta, Atak, 2015; De Fazio, 2007). Fernando’s speech is an example: ‘The black blocs, at the time [...] I don’t know if black blocs are a social movement. [...] it was cruel, man. The ‘guys’ were dangerous’ (emphasis added).

The dispersal strategy is related to the fact that, despite the official discourse, police actions taken in June tended to target protesters as a whole. Tear gas bombs and arrests were used in a relatively arbitrary manner, following the ‘traditional’ strategy of demobilizing protests. The tactical legitimization, in turn, involved official announcements (press releases, interviews, etc.) that sought to justify the tactical choices made during the protests. The very stigmatization of the ‘minority of vandals’ was translated as a way of legitimizing police tactics, since the mobilization of repressive tactics was justified by the need to control this ‘minority’.

In this context, the strategy of anticipation, with the prior collection of information about the protesters, was outlined, even if it was not systematic or prevalent. As Fernandez (2008:151) states, the forces of law and order are ‘involved in a continuous process of learning to control the flow of information’. In June 2013, BM helicopters were seen flying over protests, but some other tactics operated in a less visible way, such as using new information and communication technologies (ICTs) to monitor social networks:

Carlos: In the beginning we were taken by surprise. [...]then in June, May, June it started to progress very strongly, with black blocs, with other characteristics. And we learned [...]. And this information gradually flowed through the Brigade’s information system and [...] through Facebook, Twitter, because nowadays social media is very open. [...] So there was a strategy, so to speak, of research on the part of the police on social media and in open, unedited communications, that was what interested us. (emphasis added)

In summary, the peak of the protests in June 2013, which posed problems for the police forces due to the magnitude of the acts and the heterogeneity of the actors and tactics, was responded to mainly through the mechanism of tactical experimentation; i.e., the mobilization of various tactics, guided by different strategies, to test the possible results of their operationalization. In the previous months, BM had identified a set of tactics, and the massive protests in June were an opportunity for police to test them.

July and December 2013: from the Streets to the Investigations

Between July and December 2013, the events were once again led by Bloco de Lutas, focused on the issue of public transport fares and with a low number of protesters, resembling the events at the beginning of the year more than the June protests. In addition to the marches, this period was marked by the diversification of the protesters’ tactics, most notably the occupation of the Porto Alegre City Council in July (Rosa, 2018). On the streets, protesters’ use of disruptive forms of action became less frequent, with the decline of ‘black bloc’ tactics (Fernandes, 2016; 2020a).

Colonel Silanus Melo stated that the BM was ‘improving’ with each event to deal with the protests (Hora do Balanço, 2013). In connection with the moderation of the protesters’ tactics, the frequency of the use of physical repression was reduced during this period, with the preponderance of tactics for managing and monitoring the protests. However, several protests criticized the actions of the police forces and the ‘criminalization’ of social movements. The conflict of June tended to be channeled, in the second half of 2013, into the investigation by the PC of alleged criminal acts in the previous protests. Search and seizure warrants were carried out at houses of members of the Bloco de Lutas,¹³ and the emergence of the investigations tended to reinforce the stigmatization strategy.

On the one hand, the smaller protests in the second half of 2013, with more homogeneous groups and less frequent adoption of disruptive tactics, reduced police problems in maintaining control on the streets. On the other hand, it is possible to hypothesize that the demobilization and tactical moderation of this period were, among other factors, the result of repressive control by the police forces in June. We interpret the transition from the streets to the investigations as a continuation of the tactical experimentation mechanism already identified in the previous period.

January to July 2014: Implementing the Changes

The 2014 events organized by the Bloco de Lutas’ member groups had a low number of protesters. Although there were protests about public transport, the opposition to the World Cup became the central demand. Police action in the first protests of 2014 did not follow a uniform guideline. In the protests on January 23, April 24, May 8 and May 15, the police monitored the protests and collected information on the actors present, without adopting physical repression tactics, even when protesters adopted disruptive tactics. At the protest on April 2, military police fired tear gas bombs, causing the march to disperse 15 minutes after it began (Fernandes, 2020a).

The subsequent protests were against the World Cup and took place during the mega-event. Considering the memory of the massive protests of June 2013, at the time the police authorities were ‘afraid’ that the period of the World Cup would be marked by large demonstrations. According to Fernando: ‘We believed that the demonstrations [during the World Cup] would be the same as in 2013. [...] Honestly, we thought it would be much worse [than it was]’.

The risks of losing control of the streets during the mega-event were tackled with the strategy of anticipation, with the construction of a public security plan for the World Cup, and a high investment in technological equipment. Two special units were formed for the mega-event: the ‘Batalhão Copa’ (BCopa – World Cup Squad) and the ‘Batalhão Especial de Pronto Emprego’ (BEPE – Special Emergency Squad), the latter of which was specifically aimed at dealing with protests.

In addition to the formation of these units, planning for the World Cup involved meetings between various police institutions before, during and after the mega-event. Meetings were also held with press professionals, who were informed that, according to Fernando, protests would not be allowed on certain routes in the city: ‘The only thing we’re trying to prevent is the interruption of that route and, obviously. any act of depredation.’ Fernando emphasizes the concern of the state government and the BM not to have the ‘image’ of the police linked to conflicts, thereby demonstrating the centrality of problems related to the legitimacy of the police. The interviewee states that the guideline for dealing with protest events would be negotiation:

Fernando: We have never had any interest in having our image linked to conflicts. [...]Every riot, every problem that arises doesn’t look good for the image of the city, for the image of the government, for the image of the police. [...]What was the orientation for the team for the World Cup and for dealing with social movements? Comply with the rules on the progressive use of force. First, talk [..]if you set limits for people they won’t do what you don’t want them to do. If they do, well, they’ve been warned. So, [the guideline was] to avoid as much as possible any confrontation that could result in injuries. (emphasis added)

However, as was the case in the 2013 protests, it was difficult to establish a dialog between the police and the protesters, given the mistrust between both sides:

Fernando: [The conversation with protesters] happened on the day of the event. We tried to negotiate like this: [...] ‘look, are you going to protest tomorrow? What route do you intend to take? Because we are following.’ But it wasn’t successful, you see. It didn’t happen. [...]They’d say ‘no, we don’t have anything to talk about.’ Ok. So, we dealt with it on the day.

The protest on June 12, described in the introduction to this article, brought together nearly a thousand people. During the march, a small group of protesters decided to march to the Fan Fest;¹⁴ however, BM had built barriers that closed off all access to the venue. Unable to break through the barrier, the group of protesters returned to the heart of the city, where they were chased by BM cavalry. Tear gas bombs were also fired. Two BM soldiers and two protesters were injured, and around fifteen people were arrested. The images from the camera attached to the BM helicopter – aerial imaging – were used to make these arrests.

The then deputy commander of the BM, Silanus Mello, defended the tactic of monitoring the protesters and using selective police intervention – not targeting the entire march – and prioritizing the physical integrity of the protesters (Copa nas ruas, 2014). This selectivity was combined with the use of ICTs for surveillance and the establishment of spatial barriers. Regarding the June 12 protest, Carlos said:

Carlos: ...technologies, such as video surveillance and cameras, help a lot. I remember the World Cup episode, [...] I was in the Command-and-Control Center, and we monitored the entire action of two or three people, two or three people who were depredating, vandalizing, so to speak, through the imager placed on the Brigade’s aircraft. So, we were able to identify and arrest those people and take them away, without any violence, without any embarrassment to anyone.

This way of acting confirmed the police forces’ concern not to be criticized for a general dispersal of the protest. On the following day, June 15, a group of approximately one hundred people gathered in Redenção Park, and only about thirty protesters agreed to march towards the Beira-Rio stadium. The very small number of protesters contrasted with the number of police officers deployed to monitor the march – at least two hundred officers (Rollsing, 2014). Police had a variety of equipment, such as masks, hand grenades, motorcycles, vehicles and police cars. GoPro cameras were used on the shoulders and helmets of police officers, connected to Mochilink LiveU backpacks to transmit images in real time over the internet, as well as a helicopter for aerial imaging. The protest ended with no physical repression. On June 18, 2014, a new protest against the World Cup was attempted in the downtown area. Approximately one hundred protesters gathered in Argentina Square and tried to march towards Borges de Medeiros Avenue, where the so-called Caminho do Gol (Goal Path) was located – a route that went through the streets of the downtown area to the Beira-Rio stadium – but the act was quickly dispersed by the police. Once again, a large police contingent with hundreds of officers was mobilized, surrounding the protesters in practically every direction. According to Fernando, protesters were allowed to demonstrate, but they were to be ‘avoided’ on the Caminho do Gol (Goal Route), even though the route was included in the Esquina Democrática (Democratic Corner), a historic site for protests in the city. In reality, protests in this area were banned during the World Cup. When the protesters approached the barrier that prevented access to the Esquina Democrática, tear gas grenades were fired at them, resulting in injuries. In order to legitimize the tactics adopted, the Rio Grande do Sul Public Security Department issued a statement justifying that the blockade was for the ‘safety of the protesters’, and attributing the start of the confrontation to the fact that the protesters had broken through the police barrier (Pasinato, 2014).

The last protest against the World Cup in Porto Alegre happened on June 23, and was once again monitored by a large police contingent equipped with technological devices for gathering information. The event ended without any disruptive acts or physical repression. This set of events indicates, in short, that the policing of protests in 2014 was the result of the incorporation of the experience of the 2013 protests into police knowledge, which translates into the mechanism of incorporating the tactical changes that were outlined in previous periods into the repertoire of police action. This mechanism can be conceptualized as the evaluation of which tactics are most effective in reducing or solving police problems and the implementation of the changes resulting from this evaluation. In other words, while in 2013, tactics have been tried, in 2014, police consolidated the implementation of those considered most effective.

The 2014 protests suggest, in short, the amplification of the use of the anticipation strategy, involving planning meetings, acquisition of equipment, use of ICTs to gather information, and construction of spatial barriers – the so-called ‘no protest zones’, places where protesting is prohibited for a certain period. This strategy was combined with tactical legitimization, mainly based on the claim that the dispersal would be selective, aimed at the ‘minority of vandals’, who had been stigmatized since June 2013.

Table 2 summarizes the causal mechanisms that constituted the police learning process, as well as the period in which the mechanism tended to be activated.

Table 2
: Causal Mechanisms in the Relationship between Police Forces and Protesters

Mechanism	Description	Period
Problematization of the policing repertoire	Critical evaluation of the ‘traditional’ policing repertoire as a result of legitimacy or operational problems faced by police forces.	Inflatable armadillo episode
Identification of alternatives	Mapping of alternative tactics that can reduce or solve the problems caused by the ‘traditional’ repertoire	Jan-May 2013
Experimentation of tactics	Mobilization of several tactics to test the possible results of their operationalization	Jun. 2013; Jul-Dec. 2013
Implementation of changes	Evaluation of which tactics are most effective in reducing or solving police problems and implementation of the changes resulting from this evaluation	Jan.-Jun. 2014

Source: produced by the author.

Table 3 summarizes the relationship between repertoire, police strategies, and learning mechanisms prevalent during the protests cycle:

Table 3
: Relationship between Repertoire, Strategies, and Mechanisms by Period

	Inflatable armadillo episode	Jan-May 2013	Jun. 2013	Jul-Dec. 2013	Jan.-Jun. 2014
Prevailing repertoire	Physical repression tactics	Tactics for managing and monitoring protests	Physical repression tactics	Tactics for managing and monitoring protests	Intelligence gathering and spatial control tactics
Prevailing strategies	Dispersion	Tactical legitimization	Dispersion Stigmatization Tactical legitimization	Stigmatization	Anticipation
Prevailing mechanism	Problematization of the policing repertoire	Identification of alternatives	Experimentation of tactics	Experimentation of tactics	Implementation of changes

Source: produced by the author.

Concluding remarks

In an attempt to contribute to the national literature on protest policing, this article aims to analyze – based on the case of Porto Alegre (2013-2014) – how the repertoire and strategies of protest policing are maintained or transformed. In line with the literature and from a relational perspective, we argue that protests cycle is conducive to the emergence of police learning processes (Otten, Boin, Torre, 2001). Such learning tends to be centered around the resolution of problems that occur in the tactical interaction of police forces with protesters (Waddington, 1998; 1999; 2003; Waddington and King, 2005).

The quantitative data collected by analyzing protest events (Koopmans, Rucht, 2002; Olzak, 1989) pointed to changes in the police repertoire during the period analyzed, especially with regard to the emergence of intelligence-gathering tactics (monitoring by surveillance cameras and aerial imaging, for example). In order to explain this variation, and based on interviews with police officers, we identified four mechanisms that shaped the learning process experienced by BM during the protests cycle: problematization of the policing repertoire; identification of alternatives; tactical experimentation; incorporation of the changes. We showed that the operation of these mechanisms followed an interactional path aimed at problem-solving, resulting in the prevalence, in the last period (January to June 2014), of anticipation strategies.

The results thus contribute to the literature addressing the ‘coevolution’ between collective action tactics and police tactics (Della Porta, Tarrow, 2012) based on a focus on police knowledge (De Fazio, 2007; Della Porta, Reiter, 1998). At the national level, the research dialogues with studies that point to changes in the forms of repression and control of activism (Almeida, 2020a; Maciel, Machado, 2021; Machado, Maciel, Souza, 2021) and suggests at least four fruitful directions for future research: a) testing the police learning theory developed in this article for other contexts of protest policing in Brazil; b) analyzing the possible exchange between protest policing in Brazil and international policing models, such as the ‘strategic incapacitation’ model (Gillham, 2011), which suggests the emergence, in the 21st century, of more predictive forms of protest control; c) analyzing how tactical changes combine with a cultural pattern that is authoritarian and averse to democratic freedoms (Lima; Sinhoretto; Bueno, 2015; Pinheiro, 1991); and d) analyzing in depth the modes of operation and social-political implications of police tactics for collecting information on activism, in dialogue with surveillance studies (Fernandes, 2018; 2020a).

The authors are grateful for the contributions of members of the Associativism, Contestation and Engagement Study Group (GPACE), who discussed a preliminary version of this article. We would also like to thank the reviewers of the journal Dados for their critical comments which made it possible to qualify the arguments presented in the article. The article is based on the research carried out for the thesis “Entre ruas, câmeras e redes: as transformações das táticas policiais de controle à ação coletiva contestatória em Porto Alegre (2013-2014)", by Eduardo Georjão Fernandes, defended in the Graduate Program in Sociology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in 2020. The thesis received an honorable mention in the ANPOCS Competition of Scientific Works and University Theses in Social Sciences - 2021 Edition.

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Notes

• Dataset: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/2J3Q2N
• 1
  . Translator’s note: In Brazil, the Military Police is an ostensive police force responsible for policing and maintaining public order at state level.
• 2
  . Military Brigade (Brigada Militar – BM) is the name given to the Military Police in Rio Grande do Sul.
• 3
  . Although Maciel and Machado (2021) use the same time frame as this article (2013-2014) in their analysis, they argue that the protests cycle that began in 2013 lasted until the conclusion of the impeachment process against President Dilma Rousseff (PT) in August 2016..
• 4
  . For an in-depth analysis of the 2013 protests cycle in Porto Alegre, see: Fernandes, 2016; Muhale, 2014; Silva, 2016.
• 5
  . In 2013, Governor Tarso Genro was criticized by protesters who questioned the repressive actions of the BM (Fleck, 2018).
• 6
  . However, the articles by Maciel and Machado (2021) and Machado, Maciel and Souza (2021) should be highlighted. The first analyzes changes in police performance based on a case study in São Paulo during the same period covered by our research (2013-2014). The second studies the relationship between sporting mega-events (including the 2014 World Cup) and the repertoire of protest policing. The authors identify changes that are relatively similar to those observed in Porto Alegre.
• 7
  . The revocation in Porto Alegre, in April, inspired protesters in other demonstrations in Brazil. At a protest in the city of São Paulo on June 7, 2013, for example, demonstrators carried the banner “Let’s do as in Porto Alegre again!” (Scirea, 2013).
• 8
  . One of the limits to generalizing the results to cases in other states is due to the fact that Brazilian police forces are structured at the state level, and thus present potential differences in terms of trajectory, organization, institutional culture, among other aspects. Identifying similarities and differences therefore requires a comparative research design.
• 9
  . In order to preserve the interviewees’ anonymity, they were given pseudonyms.
• 10
  . Maciel and Machado (2021) also identify a “crisis” in the policing of protests in São Paulo, but during June 2013.
• 11
  . Meeting held on April 17, 2013. Members of the academic boards of universities (UFRGS and PUCRS), representatives of left-wing parties (PSOL, PSTU and PT), State Prosecution Service, Accounts Prosecution Service, City Hall, City Council and Brazilian Bar Association (OAB) were invited.
• 12
  . On June 29, 2013, the newspaper Zero Hora published the article “Against it all: they are anarchists”. The text seeks to summarize the foundations of anarchist ideology, stating that the thing that unites the various shades of anarchism is opposition to the state. However, the central focus of the article is the relationship between this ideology and the acts of depredation carried out in the June protests (Trezzi, 2013).
• 13
  . This article does not focus on police investigations against protesters as a result of the 2013 demonstrations. For an analysis of the issue, see Almeida, 2020b and Amaral et al., 2017.
• 14
  . Festive event promoted by FIFA and World Cup sponsors.

Data availability

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  13 Nov 2023
• Date of issue
  2024

History

• Received
  29 Jan 2022
• Reviewed
  28 Oct 2022
• Accepted
  7 Nov 2022