Confiança, conhecimento e poder: análise das atividades de inteligência da Polícia Militar no Ceará

Abstract

This thesis investigates the intelligence activity in the Military Police of Ceará. The police intelligence involves the collection and management of information that should be result in relevant knowledge for decision making of the commanders. Therefore, the PMs working in this area need to develop a range of cognitive and interpersonal skills as well as building a network of informants fundamentally based on secrecy and trust, two eminently sociological concepts. Unlike PMs operating in ostensible policing, the agents of the Reserved Service - one of the names by which this activity is known – don‘t wear uniforms and have greater autonomy of action. Because of this, they act in a thin moral line permeated by various illegalisms. In the present research, I seek to understand the performance of these policemen and how the police intelligence integrates the functioning of the criminal justice system from a theoretical and methodological strategy that is based on the reports and perceptions that intelligence agents have about their own activity.