Award of Excellence
Rafael Fabres
Freelance
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"PACIFICATION"
For over three years of full preparations for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, Rio de Janeiro developed an innovative safety program focused on so-called "UPP" - Pacification Police Units- which is a radical shift in how to deal with the problem of violence and drug trafficking in the “favelas”. UPP's mission is to maintain control of these territories once the local drug trade has been expelled. While many believe that UPPs have helped quell violence by opening the doors of the favelas to public services such as legal electricity supply, garbage collection, education, public works and social assistance program, others see the pacification program as a temporary cover-up to security problems in Rio de Janeiro. When the Olympics end up in 2016, they say, everything will be what it was.
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UPP soldier Alexandre Correa from the 4th batallion of the Sao Carlos UPP holds his service gun out the window of a police car while on patrol, in the Sao Carlos shantytown, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, February 25, 2012. Initiated in 2008, the UPP, short for Unidade de Polícia Pacificadora (in English, Pacifier Police Unit or Police Pacification Unit), is a new system of community policing in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas once run by drug traffickers. While many believe that UPPs have helped quell violence by opening the doors of the favelas to public services such as legal electricity supply, garbage collection, education, public works and social assistance program, others see the pacification program as a temporary cover-up to security problems in Rio de Janeiro.
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