In American policing, if you want to move up, you take the sergeant's exam. In São Paulo's Civil Police, a delegado stays a delegado for life, but can be third class, second class, first class or special class. That class system has just changed. In their third conversation with delegado Maurício de Thomazi, Eliel Teixeira and Edwin Wu wanted to understand how career progression works on that side and compared it with the one they know in California. The conversation ended on a topic every cop avoids running the numbers on: retirement.

Class isn't rank, but it carries the same weight

The guest called it a peculiarity of Brazilian policing. Anyone who joins São Paulo's Civil Police, whether as a delegado, an investigator or a clerk (escrivão), starts in third class and moves up to second, first and special class. He compared it to a one-, two-, three- and four-star general. A special-class investigator will never outrank a delegado, but does outrank the other investigators.

Moving up a class brings two things at once: the chance to take on command roles and more responsibility, and a pay bump. He used his own case: in July he was promoted from second-class to first-class delegado, and by his math the impact on his salary came to about 10%.

The new law: promotion by objective criteria

What changed in 2026 was the rule for moving up a class. São Paulo State Law 18,443, of April 2, 2026, reorganized the career structure of São Paulo's civil police. The bill went through the State Legislature in March, which is the month the guest remembers. The implementing rules came with Decree 70,771, of July 28, 2026, which treats career advancement as promotion by objective criteria and regardless of open positions.

In practice, according to the guest, an officer has to meet four requirements:

• time in class;
• an advancement course for the next level;
• no disciplinary record;
• a favorable performance evaluation, done by the supervisor in the internal system. The decree provides that this evaluation is based on the average of the scores for the period and can be appealed to the Civil Police Superior Council.

Because the rule was new, the first round was improvised. The system wasn't ready yet, so the administration sent a form to supervisors: "of your ten officers, two are eligible for promotion and need a technical fitness evaluation." The delegado filled it out covering the previous six months, all online, and the officer was promoted. Promotions come out every six months, and the next one, he says, is in December.

He does the math like this: doing everything by the book, an officer reaches special class at around 18 years on the job, roughly one class every six years. It was a long-standing demand, and news coverage of the reform cites the same timeline. The goal, as he reads it, was to cut back on some of the "sponsorship" and make things predictable. It isn't perfect, he admits: some more senior people got upset and talked about going to court. But with an objective rule, a lot of people who thought they'd be stuck in second class "for a million years" got promoted.

In California: rank and pay run on separate tracks

The comparison with the American model shows the main difference. In California, as in most American departments, pay and rank are independent tracks:

• Salary steps go up with time on the job and normal progression. An officer can spend an entire career as an officer and still get raises;
• Rank promotion (sergeant, lieutenant, captain) is a separate process, with an exam, evaluations and a ranked eligibility list.

In São Paulo, as the hosts understood it, the two come together: moving up a class means moving up in pay.

One of the hosts, who is a sergeant, described his own promotion, and the process looks a lot like São Paulo's. Besides the written exam, the department wanted to see his annual evaluations and sent a form to the captain at the time to vouch for his leadership ability. Time in rank, a stint in a specialized unit, additional certifications and academic credentials also counted. In his group, graduate degrees and master's degrees were what made the difference. In earlier promotions, what counted was street time. The tiebreaker changes from one round to the next, and the weight of a degree was already the subject of another Palavrão Tático article, from episode 42.

Retirement: the math nobody likes to do

The next question was how a cop's pension is calculated. The guest's answer was honest: "The guys are going to cuss me out, but I have no idea." The rules have been changed so many times that nearly every case is its own case. He splits São Paulo officers into groups by hire date: before 2003, between 2003 and 2013, between 2013 and 2019, and after 2019.

Those cutoffs line up with the big milestones of Brazil's public-employee pension system:

• the Constitutional Amendment 41/2003, which ended full-salary pensions and parity with active-duty raises for anyone hired after it;
• the launch, in 2013, of the supplementary pension plan for São Paulo state employees (SP-Prevcom), which capped benefits at the ceiling for new hires;
• the Constitutional Amendment 103/2019, the national pension reform, followed by São Paulo's own reform in 2020.

The one fixed point he mentioned is the minimum age: 55, with minimum time contributing and minimum time in police service. And, according to him, those who retire lose a significant share of their income, because active-duty add-ons and allowances don't count toward the calculation. Colleagues find that out by checking the state transparency portal.

On the American side, the hosts' answer was: "it's the same here." California pension systems separate what is pensionable (counts toward the calculation) from what isn't. Overtime, for example, is generally left out. For new members of state and local plans, the PEPRA reform (Public Employees' Pension Reform Act), in effect since January 1, 2013, pushed safety formulas to older ages: 2% at 50, 2.5% at 57 and 2.7% at 57, depending on the plan. That's the "it started at 50, became 55, 57" the hosts mention. Some large cities, like Los Angeles, have their own pension system for police and firefighters. And the equivalent of the transparency portal exists: the Transparent California website publishes public employees' salaries and pensions, and plenty of cops check it before deciding when to go.

What the two think about it

In the episode, Eliel Teixeira and Edwin Wu talk about promotion in American policing from their own experience: the exam, the supervisor's evaluation, academic credentials and salary steps that run separately from rank. To them, São Paulo's new model seems fairer to officers. The guest talks about the new law and his own promotion. The full conversation is in the episode.

Sources and verification

São Paulo State Law 18,443, of April 2, 2026 (career plan for the civil police careers), and State Decree 70,771, of July 28, 2026 (rules for promotion), at the São Paulo State Legislative Assembly. Brazilian Constitutional Amendments 41/2003 and 103/2019. California Public Employees' Pension Reform Act of 2013 (PEPRA, AB 340). Transparent California (transparentcalifornia.com). The salary impact of the promotion, the six-month cycle and the 18-year estimate to reach special class are the guest's own accounts. The promotion process described by the hosts is their department's and varies between agencies.

Who's talking here: Eliel Teixeira and Edwin Wu are active-duty police officers in the Los Angeles area, California — Brazilian-born, American citizens, with long careers in law enforcement. In this episode, produced in partnership with Criminocast, they welcome for the third time Maurício de Thomazi, a delegado with the São Paulo State Civil Police, professor of criminology and criminal procedure, and host of Criminocast.

Note: what is described here about American policing applies to the rules of California — and, on several points, to each host's specific department. In other American states the rules are different. What is described about Brazil applies to the Civil Police of São Paulo; each Brazilian police force has its own organic law and internal rules.