Psyc 102
Instructor: Katleen
February 28th, 2013 Conflict between BOPE Officers and Drug Gang Members in Elite Squad. The Elite Squad is film about Captain Roberto Nascimento, a BOPE (Special Operation Police Squad) captain of Rio de Janeiro, who has to find a replacement, because he was going to be a father, while he and this team are “cleaning up” one of the most notorious favelas off drug gangs in Rio before the arrival of the Pope. This created a conflict between the BOPE officers and the drug gang members. The conflict between the BOPE officers and the drug gang members kept on growing because of the mirror-image perception they both had, the fundamental attribution error they made and the way deindividaulized. In the movie, BOPE officers frequently raid the favela (slums) mostly during the dark, to arrest the drug gang members that the Pope can have a peaceful visit. These raids end up in many deaths and injuries on both side but main on the gang members side because the BOPE officers are professionals and they do not act rash. The gang members are disorganized so they run in different direction making it a little bit hard for the BOPE officers to locate one particular person because the lose sight of them. The gang members kill people they are angry with even innocent once who should not have been there. The BOPE officers and the drug gang member see each other is being senseless murderer while seeing themselves as good citizens doing the right thing for their country and community respectively. This is mirror-image perception. Mirror-image perception is when conflicting groups see themselves as being peaceful while viewing the other a bad group. The BOPE officers believe that that they are doing what is best for their country and they believe that the drug gang members do not care about their community or the safety of their people. That they kill people randomly, some of who are innocent bystanders and they happen to be at the