Policing of urban margins, police accountability, and contested human rights: an enquiry into a Chilean neighbourhood

The chapter brings to light the experience of La Legua, a neighbourhood in the urban margins of Santiago subjected to two decades of hardline policing practices. The first part describes the process of police intervention, highlighting its failure to meet its declared objectives and the patterns of police violence and discrimination. We base these observations on empirical work carried out in the area as well as long-standing work with a local organisation. The second part of the chapter advances two reflections. The first one is about the potential and limitations of the human rights language and conventional tools of police accountability used to address complaints of police brutality in La Legua. The second is a reflection on the deep structure of police interventions, or how police practices in La Legua reveal some inherent features of the police power of the state. The chapter concludes with a balance and a brief discussion of what futures can be imagined from such an inauspicious trajectory as that of La Legua.