Armas menos letais, uso da força policial e militarização da segurança

Abstract

The work analyzes incidences, effects and meanings of the dissemination, in the last decades, of the use of the so-called non-lethal or less lethal weapons by police forces around the world. Based on bibliographic research and other materials available on the internet, it maps the international discussion about these weapons, including conceptual disputes, issues of legislation and regulation, controversies about the effects on human health and the impacts on the levels of use of police force. Then, it articulates this theme with the process of militarization of the police in the US and the dissemination to other countries of a model of security and public space management anchored in “permanent wars” (on crime, drugs, terrorism) and the dilution of boundaries between military and police activities. It seeks to show that it is within such a context that the expansion of “biopolitical” technologies of subjection must be understood, as well as the virtually barrier-free development of a huge and lucrative market fueled by the economic, social and political crises that accompany the consolidation of neoliberalism and “post-democratic” modes of government. The study indicates that non- or less lethal weapons represent effective technologies for the expansion, diversification and intensification of police power, as they facilitate the exercise of violence and coercive social control over individuals and social segments considered as those “not to be killed”. Far from replacing lethal weapons and reducing police violence – as the seductive propaganda of manufacturing companies and security agencies tries to make believe –, such technologies supplement the extreme resources of state power, allowing for a finer hierarchy of the means of force according to social targets of that same power. This explains the apparent paradox, both in the North American and in the Brazilian case (with due regard for the proportion), of the coexistence of high levels of police lethality with the intense use of “non-lethal” weapons in day-to-day policing and in the repression of protest demonstrations.