"Cool Police Station," program. In Brazilian slang, legal also means "cool." The idea was to make civil police stations professional and presentable and therefore less threatening. Traditionally, a crime victim venturing into a station was likely to encounter a hostile, lethargic, perhaps even shirtless detective working at a typewriter in a sweaty cavern. The stations invariably echoed with the menacing clamor of crammed lockups functioning as miniature prisons. Investigations often began a full week after a reported crime. To use Soares' word, the 121 stations were an "archipelago" of isolated fiefdoms with their own arcane rules and procedures. Commanders were feudal barons who got rich negotiating the outcome of cases with suspects and jailhouse privileges with inmates, he says. Soares decided to overhaul the stations one by one; 40 model stations are scheduled to be completed by the end of this year. The 64 procedural manuals were condensed into six. Hardened inmates were transferred to new facilities. University students were hired as receptionists. Computer specialists designed a computer grid to connect stations and enable centralized monitoring of cases. The uniformed police were generally receptive, Soares said, but the resistance in the civil police was immediate. The governor backed Soares in his first skirmish, dismissing a hostile public safety secretary in April of last year. Meanwhile, Rio experienced high-profile killings that Soares and his advisors suspected were part of a plot to sabotage them. The eight slayings appeared to be random, and some--such as a drive-by shooting outside a soccer game--seemed designed to cause an uproar. Proving a conspiracy, however, was difficult. Soares, the father of two college-age daughters, also received telephone death threats. In August, Garotinho got a tip that a rogue police group was planning a campaign of bloodshed, with Soares and the governor as the top targets. Both men beefed up their security details. The year-end crime statistics were mixed. Officer-involved shootings and bank robberies were down, crimes resulting in death had stayed about the same, and street robberies and auto thefts were up. Overall, Soares felt vindicated because crime had not worsened dramatically amid the sometimes traumatic reorganization. And, he says, his team was more honest about statistics, publicizing voluminous data and junking a practice of manipulating numbers with categories such as "suspicious deaths." In December, however, the governor shocked Soares by appointing Louzada to run the civil police over his objections that the new chief was corrupt. The governor replied that the suspicions were unfounded and that the veteran detective had political support and a track record of results, Soares said. Soares almost resigned, but "I thought it would be irresponsible to quit. There was so much work invested, so much hope in the society. I thought I could fight back. But from that moment on, the trust was gone with the governor." The definitive break came soon. Soares clashed publicly with Garotinho over a curious case in which a wealthy documentary filmmaker paid a youthful drug trafficker to abandon his violent ways and write a book about his life. The filmmaker had consulted with Soares and the