At the beginning of February, around 10,000 members of the Military Police in the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia went on strike after years of failed negotiations for pay increases and better benefits. As a result of the strikes, the crime rates soared in Salvador, the capital of Bahia. The number of murders in the first ten days of February (136) more than doubled the number of murders during the same time period in 2011. Three thousand members of the Brazilian Armed Forces and the Federal Police were deployed to the state to maintain order and to arrest several of the police officers who organized the strike. Most of the strike participants resumed their duties today after the head of the Bahia Military Police gave them an ultimatum: return to work or you will be punished. While the police strikes in Bahia seem to be coming to an end, similar strikes are beginning in other areas of Brazil. In the state of Rio de Janeiro, the Rio Military Police, municipal civil police (SINDPOL) and firefighters began what they claim will be peaceful protests today, and the state has asked that 14,000 federal troops and police be available for use to keep the peace.

Police in Brazil are notoriously underpaid, and despite wide recognition of this injustice, the Brazilian government has been slow to raise their wages. But given the startling rise in crime in Salvador, Bahia, during the strike, residents of the city were understandably upset with the strike and are unlikely to join the fight to increase their pay. Some people have argued that members of the military are barred by the military code of justice from participating in strikes or union activity, and as the State Police forces are auxiliary units of the Armed Forces, it is illegal for them to go on strike. Although the Rio state governor signed a new law on Thursday night that will gradually increase the pay of state police and firefighters over the next year by 39%, the debates over salaries and benefits seem unlikely to end soon, as this is far below the 107% that was demanded.

There are rampant corruption problems in the police throughout Brazil, at the municipal and state levels, and raising salaries to a fair level could be one tool for rooting out corruption and increasing professionalization. Others, including Rio state representative Marcelo Freixo, have signaled that the problem lies deeper, in the fact that the institutions tasked with ensuring security lack many of the basic rights that they are supposed to protect. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights argued in their 2009 Report on Citizen Security and Human Rights that providing proper work conditions and compensation for public security officials was essential for ensuring that both security and human rights are upheld. Although the strikes will probably end before Carnival begins next Friday, the issues of fair compensation for public servants and the need to provide democratic public security in Brazil are not going anywhere, and the local, state, and federal governments should work diligently to solve these urgent problems.