A LEGAL-INSTITUTIONAL AUTOETHNOGRAPHY OF A MILITARY POLICE TRAJECTORY TO THE PRESIDENCY OF ICMBIO

Resumo

This article uses a professional trajectory within the Military Police of the State of São Paulo – from training at the Barro Branco Academy and service in the Rondas Ostensivas Tobias de Aguiar (ROTA) to commanding the Environmental Police and, later, to the presidency of the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio) – as empirical material for an autoethnographic study subjected to documentary triangulation and explicit theoretical grounding. It argues that this trajectory allows for an understanding of three interconnected institutional phenomena: the legitimation of command authority in light of Weberian legal-rational domination; the discretionary nature of daily police activity, especially in environmental policing, where the mechanical subsumption between fact and norm is rarely sufficient; and the constitutional duty of environmental protection that provides a normative foundation for enforcement, interpreted in light of climate constitutionalism. The biographical material is not treated as a self-sufficient memoir, but as a case study subjected to theoretical critique and documentary verification. It is concluded that the figure of the senior officer who is also a researcher and public policy maker offers a perspective that is still little explored in the literature on the professionalization of public security and on the effectiveness of environmental enforcement in Brazil.