Lt Cl. Rodrigo Duton explains the challenges of policing Rio de Janeiro

From Issue 1 of the Police Science Dr Magazine

"I believe evidence-based policing is a trending topic and we should follow this path because it is necessary for you to have strong evidence to support our decision-makers and once we have academia beside us it's really important, because we are not alone and we start in this process right now. This is something really new here in Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro specifically. I don't see any initiative so far, so what we are trying to do is to bring academia closer to the police to work together and to investigate together, to study together, to discuss. I think this is the path that once we have better informed decisions based on academic evidence, it will help us a great deal, I believe."

"We have a strong problem here concerning drug dealers, concerning illegal firearms, so we need to better investigate how these firearms, how drugs arrive here in Brazil, specifically in Rio de Janeiro, because we don't have international borders, we are on the coast, we are bordering the Atlantic Ocean, so borders in Brazil are far away from my home town, my home state, and we don't produce drugs, we don't have coca plantations, we don't produce firearms but we have a lot of problems with drugs and firearms here, so we need to study more in depth what's happening and take some actions based on informed academic decisions."

"It's really a huge problem, because we have huge borders and our borders are porous. For you to have a rough idea, Brazil has 17,000 km of land borders and we share borders in Brazil with 10 different countries in South America, among these 10 we have Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, the three major producers of coca in the world. So, cocaine arrives pretty easily in Brazil, just in terms of comparison, the United States South border with Mexico has roughly 3,000 km of land borders and Brazil has 17,000 km of land borders with 10 different countries, and three major producers of coca, so just considering these numbers you can understand how huge is our challenge here in Brazil to control our borders, to avoid international trafficking, to counter international organised criminals is really huge problem."

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