Police institutions in the face of the pandemic: sensemaking, leadership, and discretion

Abstract

Resumo O enfrentamento da pandemia da COVID-19 desponta como um dos maiores desafios recentes impostos à humanidade. Dentre as instituições públicas especialmente acionadas, as polícias estão posicionadas na linha de frente. A partir de suas características organizacionais e profissionais, discute-se estratégias de enfrentamento à pandemia por meio do desenvolvimento de novas habilidades organizacionais que propiciem alterar suas lógicas de funcionamento de “guerra contra o crime” para ações humanitárias. Assim, aponta-se a necessidade de coordenação sistêmica dos órgãos policiais, tanto entre em si, como no conjunto das demais medidas de enfrentamento. Nesses termos, a partir da análise de experiências diversas, propõe-se a formação de uma articulação interorganizacional fundamentada na criação de elementos linguísticos e materiais, com o compartilhamento de mapas estratégicos e planos informacionais. Para tanto, conclui-se que a revisão de protocolos de atuação das polícias em emergências de saúde pública, a incluir o Plano de Resposta em Emergências em Saúde Pública, do Ministério da Saúde, tem a capacidade de prover avanços nessa questão.

Policing the COVID-19 Pandemic: Exploratory Study of the Types of Organizational Changes and Police Activities Across the Globe

“…Yet, PPE has not been readily available and police agencies, particularly smaller ones (Hansen & Lory, 2020), continue to struggle with securing sufficient quantities of PPE for their employees. This is also the case in other countries, including Brazil where only about one third of the police officers were given PPE and trained how to stay safe during the pandemic (Matarazzo et al, 2020). Keeping personnel safe is another key organizational response to the pandemic.…”

“…Although police agencies have emphasized different aspects of change in adapting to the pandemic, a common theme was changed to the internal organization (e.g., suspending in-person training and recruitment, adjusting roll calls, limiting access to buildings, encouraging remote work, physical distancing, and reassigning officers). The issue of police changes in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been addressed in numerous countries, including Australia (e.g., Drew & Martin, 2020), Brazil (Matarazzo et al, 2020), Canada (Jones, 2020), Denmark (Hartmann & Hartmann, 2020), Peru (Hernandez-Vasquez & Azanedo, 2020), United Kingdom (Reicher & Stott, 2020; Stott et al, 2020), United States (Jennings & Perez, 2020; Kugler et al, 2021; Papazoglou et al, 2020; White & Fradella, 2020), and Vietnam (Luong et al, 2020).…”

Performance of Fuzzy Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis of Emergency System in COVID-19 Pandemic. An Extensive Narrative Review

“…These actions include the encouragement of social distancing and use of face masks, enforcing lockdown rules, imposing travel restrictions, maintaining public order and crowd control, and, additionally, ensuring the safety of health professionals and equipment. One of the main challenges of this crisis for this professional group, however, is to maintain communication with the citizens, especially those affected, create a connection with essential social services for the more vulnerable individuals, provide humanitarian support, while also reducing the rates of specific types of crimes (e.g., domestic violence) [ 55 , 56 ].…”

A comparative study of police organizational changes during the COVID-19 pandemic: responding to public health crisis or something else?

“…Countries typically authorized police agencies to enforce these rules, often with limited training or instruction (e.g. Matarazzo et al , 2020 ; Warren et al , 2020 ). Police agencies around the world were entrusted—and often expected—to issue fines and make arrests for violations of the COVID-19 restrictions (e.g.…”