ABSTRACT
By the mid-1990s, influenced by the French policing experience and by the public demand for better police services, the political discourse of the Portuguese politicians introduced the idea of a more attentive police to the citizens’ needs. The police administrators accepted the idea and, by the late 1990s, the two main police forces in Portugal had implemented programs of policiamento de proximidade (Costa 1996), literally meaning proximity policing, a police that is closer to the ones that are policed (essentially it is community policing with Portuguese nuances).
