Ostensive Policing and the Police Approach: the social representations of Military Police officers on the construction of the racialized suspect

Abstract

This article addresses police approach, analyzing the construction of the “natural suspect” based on the social marker of race. Its objective is to identify how police officers perceive and justify police selectivity based on racial attributes that construct the figure of the suspect. For this purpose, a literature review was conducted, and interviews were carried out with 12 officers from the Military Brigade of Rio Grande do Sul (RS), aiming to identify the social representations about policing and the police work itself, and how they perceive the influence of the social marker of race. By crossing the data collected in the interviews with those on police approach and the racial issue in the state, it is possible to affirm that the police approach is permeated by racialization processes that carry with them the social construction of the “natural suspect,” that is, they demonstrate the existence of mechanisms of racialization of suspects.