BRASILIA (Reuters):

Brazil's policemen have a well-earned reputation for brutality and corruption.

But on a recent evening at the University of Brasilia, a group of hardened cops sat in a classroom to hear about the virtues of human rights and a friendlier approach to policing the mean streets of Brazil's cities.

"We want an intelligent police that ensures security without violating human rights," said Ricardo Balestreri, officer in charge of police training in the federal government.

Balestreri, a former head of the rights group Amnesty International in Brazil, is the architect of a programme involving classes for 1,600 policemen at universities throughout the country.

Classes focus on teaching the rights of suspected criminals and of minorities, as well as non-violent police tactics. They also touch on basic psychology and sociology and discuss the role of the police in society.

The approach is a novelty in a country where the police are often seen as part of the crime problem, not a solution, and where rights groups complain they are badly trained, corrupt, and repressive.

Several recent massacres have been attributed to police forces or off-duty cops, including the killing of 29 people in the Rio de Janeiro suburb of Nova Iguacu in March 2005.

In the Brasilia University classroom, the new approach drew a harsh response from some.

A war out there

"It's a war out there. I want to see how the Royal (Canadian) Mounted Police would fare in a fight with Rio drug traffickers armed to their teeth," one heavy-set officer roared, waving his finger menacingly.

Newscasts regularly show police in Rio de Janeiro trading machine gun fire with drug traffickers from behind armoured troop carriers and later carting bodies away.

In response to a wave of attacks by a criminal gang in Sao Paulo in May, police killed more than 100 suspects in what Amnesty said appeared to death-squad style revenge killings.