Brazilian municipal mayors lack control over military police who answer to rival state governors

Evidence

Within City Hall itself, Haddad was having his own problems with the police. Brazilian cops are military police, a legacy of the dictatorship, and the most important troops report to the state government. State Governor Geraldo Alckmin, from the center-right PSDB party, was a political rival of Dilma and Haddad, and had very different ideas about public security. Haddad believed that the Polícia Militar (PM) was upset with City Hall over a budgeting issue inherited from the previous mayor. Moreover, the cops were explicitly refusing to collaborate with his “Open Arms” treatment program, which insisted on dealing with homeless crack users as addicts, not criminals. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 365

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s running theme of how federal structures shape protest and state repression; echoes earlier chapters on state-local security relations. — connects to: A mayor can lack power he nominally holds when confronted by a powerful rival. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 39
• CANDY: The ‘crossed arms’ retaliation detail — police refusing to police a city event over a budget dispute — is a vivid, tweetable fact about subnational politics.

Broader Connections

• A mayor can lack power he nominally holds when confronted by a powerful rival. #exemplifies (0.88) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 39