Protecting São Paulo citizens from theft with Android Enterprise
Editor’s note: Today’s post is by Captain Bruno Pettinato of the Military Police of the State of São Paulo (PMESP) in Brazil. The PMESP chose Android Enterprise for its 80,000 officers in São Paulo, and recently integrated the Remote Lock feature into their toolkit to help identify citizens' stolen mobile devices and protect their personal data.
Mobile phone robbery is a frustrating crime for both citizens and officers in Brazil. In São Paulo, the Polícia Militar do Estado de São Paulo (PMESP) is focused on protecting the public, including managing security at major events like Carnaval de São Paulo. To deliver superior service for both the 80,000 officers on the street and the IT teams managing the fleet, PMESP chose Android Enterprise. We successfully deployed 10,000 Terminal Portátil de Dados (TPD) devices into police vehicles, equipping every PMESP officer in São Paulo with a dedicated, secure mobile tool.
The TPD is an essential, fully managed device that houses critical applications for criminal and vehicle research, preparing police reports, and issuing traffic tickets. Android Enterprise enables centralized device and app management that simplifies operations for our IT teams. We can push essential apps like Google Maps from our São Paulo headquarters via Urmobo’s Mobile Device Management (MDM), ensuring all 10,000 TPD devices receive the update in just minutes. The ease of deployment of Zero-Touch, combined with Android’s commitment to regular security updates, ensures our officers always have the most secure and up-to-date tools available.
Help from Android when our citizens need it most
The success of the Android Enterprise TPD devices went beyond core functions. Officers quickly became so comfortable using the devices that they started coming to their leaders with new ideas for using Android features to improve productivity or to help citizens. This is how we learned about the potential of Android Remote Lock.
Attendees often ask on-site PMESP officers for help when phones are stolen or lost at major public events, like Carnaval de São Paulo. In the past, we were only able to help by filing a police report. With Brazil's high Android usage, we realized leveraging a built-in Android security feature could empower our officers to help victims secure their personal data and prevent its misuse by criminals.
We shared our challenge with Google’s Android Enterprise team in São Paulo. They helped us understand how we could leverage Remote Lock across our 10,000 TPD devices, a critical solution due to Brazil’s high Android usage. We are now able to better serve phone theft victims with the help of Android’s built in security.
Turning officer insights into an anti-theft solution
If police officers are alerted to a device theft, they can access the Remote Lock web page, part of Android Find Hub, using their TPDs. An officer enters the citizen’s phone number in Find Hub, and that’s it — the device screen is locked, preventing someone else from accessing or misusing the personal data on the phone.
Even better, we can now track the stolen device's location immediately. With the victim's permission, we log them into their account using the Find Hub guest mode on TPDs to begin tracking. From the moment tracking begins, we can report movement via GPS and enable the tracking of devices to recover the device and arrest the criminal, providing even better service for our citizens.
Positive feedback from officers and citizens
The State of São Paulo began using Remote Lock in June of 2025. Since then, the feature has been used by PMESP officers more than 5,000 times. Plus, a video we created that tells citizens how to turn on the Remote Lock feature has gained more than 1 million views.
We hear every day from our offices who help citizens with the Remote Lock feature that they can see the relief on the victims’ faces when they realize their personal data will be safe from criminals. Based on its ease of use and warm reception by our community, we believe this solution can be replicated by police departments across the world and invite other organizations to discover the power of always-on Android security by contacting a partner.
