New research from the Public Policy Analysis Division at Fundação Getulio Vargas (DAPP/FGV), published by the newspaper O Globo this Sunday, revealed that 69% of Brazilian police say they acted the best way possible during the demonstrations and 64% of them indicated that they were not specially trained to deal with them.The data - extracted from a survey conducted through the internet with 4,499 police officers from all regions of the country - show that agents understand what the new protests represent, and that they need to be better prepared. The officers felt that they had to improvise in unexpected situations, explains the director of DAPP, Marco Aurélio Ruediger, who led the study. The police have a hard time knowing how to act in these situations, both due to its legal aspects and their own training, and this generates an overflow of violence that affects everyone, especially those who are there peacefully, he added.Ruediger warns to the fact that governments need to be aware that the protests should continue and that, therefore, the actions of the security forces should be rethought. This leads the structure of the state to ponder and adopt a quick institutional improvement, because it is not a transitory thing, he continued, highlighting the role of social networks in the propagation and maintenance of the phenomenon. Civil society is increasingly more connected through these digital tools.An evaluation of their own performanceMost police do not believe that the actions of officers during the protests were appropriate: only 10% identified as correct the behavior in the demonstrations. Another 19% answered that some colleagues did not act in the right way, but we cannot generalize.In addition, more than a half of the respondents (or 60%) indicated that the actions of the police are determined by state governments.Black blocsA survey conducted by DAPP also asked the police what they thought about black blocs. 78% answered that they did not identify a clear motive in the group, 24% believe that their goal was to face and provoke police officers, and 9% of agents stated that the black blocs defend citizens' rights.The analysis was made from 5,304 interviews with police officers, collected between November 26, 2013 and January 14 this year.Please click here to read the full article (in Portuguese).