Entre dados e controvérsias: a influência dos militares na criação e institucionalização de uma polícia federal brasileira

Abstract

In the present research we analyze the process of creation and institutionalization of the Brazilian Federal Police, evaluating the impact of the military presence in the definition of its functions and scope. The design of the institutional formation of this police was done after the analysis of the performance of its respective sectors of information/intelligence. To understand the formation of the Department of Federal Police, it was necessary, at first, to go back to the origins of the agency that existed before it, the Departamento Federal de Segurança Pública (Federal Department of Public Security), created in 1944 during Getúlio Vargass dictatorship. The understanding of the transition from the Federal Department of Public Security to the Department of Federal Police was relevant in order to realize the consecution of the militarys goals when being inserted in a direct way in the sectors of public security and judiciary police throughout the country. The research, therefore, allowed the re-reading of the performance of the federal police in terms of repression during the military dictatorship, when it became in charge of censorship. It was also analyzed here the performance of the federal police in the process of transition to the democracy and the strategies applied in order to protect it from possible retaliations of the new democratic government. The way it found to ensure the prerogatives and the scope of performance during the 1988 Constituent Assembly was analyzed. Finally, we look into Romeu Tumas management, a former chief officer of the Civil Police of São Paulo under the influence of the military, and the beginning of the process of consolidation of the police corporatism initiated by the commissioners of the federal police in the early 2000s.