• The Police—Why Are They Necessary?
    Awake!—2002 | July 8

    • The Police​—Why Are They Necessary?

      WHAT would life be like without police? Well, what happened in 1997 when 18,000 police officers went on strike in the Brazilian city of Recife, leaving its more than one million residents without police?

      “In five chaotic days in this beachside metropolis, the daily homicide rate has tripled,” reported The Washington Post. “Eight banks have been robbed. Gangs have run wild through a shopping mall and driven through upper-class neighborhoods firing guns. And no one is obeying the traffic laws. . . . The crime wave has tested the limits of the morgue and flooded the largest state hospital, where gunshot and stabbing victims are stretched out on hallway floors.” The justice secretary was reported as saying: “This kind of lawlessness is unprecedented here.”