LBJ School News Brief

August 12, 2004

Brasilian police photo

In a Belo Horizonte favela, community policing programs with children are part of a long-term effort by police to build trust with area residents.

Community policing goes global
Texas-Brazil exchange fosters
new trend in law enforcement

LBJ School Professor Bill Spelman makes the case that the basic role of police officers is the same worldwide, regardless of cultural and political differences.

“All police officers fundamentally have the same job,” said Spelman, who directs the School’s Texas Institute for Public Problem Solving (TIPPS). “They are still going to respond to crime, still going to conduct follow-up investigations, and still going to have to hold the hands of distraught victims exactly the same way that they have to in the U.S.”

Spelman is also of the opinion that police work should move beyond this traditional approach and adopt community-oriented policing (COP) programs that emphasize prevention over response. This fall, he will participate in a police exchange designed to strengthen COP initiatives in Central Texas and Minas Gerais, Brazil.

Spelman explains that the primary goal of community policing is to improve public safety and reduce the fear of crime through prevention and proactively addressing the root causes of crime and disorder. It is a long-term, interdisciplinary approach that calls for a high degree of community engagement.

community policing photo

As part of community policing programs in Georgetown, Texas, officers visit schools to teach children about safety and crime prevention.

“The best way to ensure public safety is not to catch crooks. It’s to prevent the crime from ever occurring in the first place,” said Spelman. “It’s a lot more intellectual than the old cop work of catching bad guys. You’ve got to understand who is involved, why crimes take place. You’ve got to ask the question of why.”

Answering these questions goes beyond the scope and resources of individual communities and police departments, and relies on the expertise of academic and nonprofit organizations. Several organizations from The University of Texas at Austin, including TIPPS and the Brazil Center, have teamed up with the João Pinheiro Foundation in Minas Gerais to make the Texas-Brazil exchange both a practical and an intellectual experience.

The exchange program will send three police officers from the Austin and Georgetown Police Departments to Belo Horizonte for two weeks in August, and six representatives from Minas Gerais law enforcement for two weeks to Central Texas in September. In both countries, police officers will receive training in community policing techniques, tour law enforcement facilities, and engage in dialog with academics, community leaders, and government officials. The scale of interaction and partnerships make the Brazil-Texas police exchange a true exercise in community policing on the international level.

The Narcotics Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy in Brazil has invested close to $100,000 in the project, which highlights growing international interest in community policing models. The hope in Brazil is that community policing techniques will improve safety in favelas – or urban slums -- that suffer from acute crime and deep mistrust between residents and law enforcement.

A leader in Brazil’s movement, Minas Gerais began its community policing programs in the 1990s. Like a number of other developing nations, Brazil continues to learn from models in countries like the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan, who have been implementing community policing for decades.

The philosophies behind community policing first surfaced in the United States in the 1970s and took root in the last decade as a result of the 1994 Crime Bill. With funding from the U.S. Department of Justice, TIPPS was established at the LBJ School in 1997. Part of the national network of Regional Community Policing Institutes, TIPPS has trained more than 11,000 police officers and community members on issues that range from homeland security to domestic violence.

According to TIPPS staff member Kristin Lion, who designed the Brazil-Texas exchange, both sides stand to benefit from the program.

Kristin Lion photo

TIPPS staff member Kristin Lion conducted field research on Brazil's community police programs while pursuing her master's degree at UT Austin's Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies.

“The Brazilians are eager to learn more about programs that deal with domestic violence and school safety that have had success in Texas,” said Lion. “On the other side, the group from Texas is very interested in the state-of-the art crime mapping system in place in Minas Gerais.”

The most valuable lessons afforded by the exchange may actually be the least obvious ones. “Exposure to a foreign culture will challenge the participants to open their minds and deepen their sensitivity toward people from distinct backgrounds,” said Lion. “The hope is that they will carry the experience back to their communities.”

12 August 2004

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