O artigo discute a "suspensão" da queixa policial na Delegacia Especializada de Atendimento à Mulher (DEAM), procedimento usual até a Lei nº 9.099/95, que instituiu os Juizados Especiais Criminais e o novo encaminhamento jurídico para as denúncias de atos violentos contra as mulheres. Trata-se de um estudo etnográfico, realizado entre 1995-1996, no qual se observou a dinâmica de atendimento policial em uma DEAM do estado do Rio de Janeiro, tendo sido também entrevistadas 32 mulheres que recorriam à DEAM em momento posterior à denúncia, para prestarem depoimentos ou solicitarem a "retirada" da queixa. Dentre os resultados, abordam-se as especificidades da demanda feminina à polícia, na qual os delitos denunciados estão subsumidos a um conjunto mais amplo de queixas referidas às "perturbações" masculinas à ordem familiar.

This paper deals with the "suspension" of complaints from the records of the Women's Police Station, until Act n. 9.099/95. The ethnographic study was carried out at a police station in the state of Rio de Janeiro (1995-1996) and included the examination of police records, interviews with the victims and observation of daily work at the office. Quite often women from the working class who are victims of marital violence chose not to legally punish their partners, contrarily to feminist's expectations. The results show the specificities of the feminine demand to the police, in which denounced crimes are included in a wider ensemble of complaints referred to male "disturbances" to the family order. The "suspension" of the complaint appears in such context as a police procedure which finds support in the doubtful position of the victims as for the criminalization of their partner's attitude and in the probable impunity of the accused, a strong characteristic of the Brazilian juridical system. Since most victims see the police intervention as a way to reorganize the familiar and conjugal relationship or to make it possible for a conjugal separation, they tend to administer its interference to their own benefit, regaining negotiations with the accused in a superior position to the one in which they found themselves before. Seen through the eyes of women, the "suspension" would be not a contradictory act to the denouncement but an element which could favor the return to a lost reciprocity.