How long can Egypt justify police brutality?

Police in the Middle East are generally known to function as guardians of a corrupt political status quo, rather than keepers of peace or providers of justice. This discrepancy has created - in many countries - a space where upholders of the law end up above it. For at least four decades now, Egyptian police have exemplified that description.

Over the past month, dozens of allegations of police brutality have brought the issue to the fore, after several post-revolution years of comparative quiet on the subject. The reports, jarring yet commonplace, and distance from politics, made many take notice.

In mid-February, one plainclothes police officer in the Darb ElAhmar neighbourhood reportedly shot a taxi driver in the head, point-blank, after what seemed to be an altercation over whether or not the officer should pay his fare.

In another, police officers were caught on camera brutally attacking a doctor inside a hospital, simply because the medic refused to put all of his patients aside to tend to one of their non-urgent injuries.

They called for reinforcements, arrested the doctors - who were on duty at a very busy public hospital - all to teach them a lesson for not paying them God-like deference.

One woman was sexually harassed by a man in public and in front of her young son, allegedly by a police officer who tried to force her to go home with him. After physically and verbally attacking her, according to eyewitnesses, he taunted her to let her know she'd never be able to get back at him - since he was a police officer and known to be "in charge of the neighbourhood".

That was, incidentally, why none of the many nearby witnesses intervened.

Almost every time one of these instances happens, the interior ministry exhibits the same trend in responding:

1)      Denial

2)      Attempt to blame one of their bogeymen: The Muslim Brotherhood, "foreign-funded" conspiracies, an unruly/undeserving population, the Freemasons, Photoshop, too few police officers maintaining order… and hope it sticks

3)      Acknowledge that the incident occurred, but remain outraged that people blame the entire security apparatus - again.

Egyptian prisons have been filled with more political detainees than the jailers know what to do with

 

Perhaps the apolitical and very public nature of many of these transgressions is what has generated this broad wave of police criticism sweeping the country. For more than two years, Egyptian prisons have been filled with more political detainees than the jailers know what to do with.

Activists have been held for years without charge, some have been "disappeared" by security forces for months at a time. All the while, stories of brutal treatment permeate society. 

But given the state of fear generated by Cairo's threats of terrorism and chaos, both imagined and real, the outrage over these transgressions is reserved to the perennial advocates of human rights.

Some here have succumbed to the paranoiac maxim of "human rights can wait, while we stabilise our country".

The call for these rights were one of the main reasons the Arab Spring caught on in Egypt. And now Cairo seems to be punishing the general population for that fact.

Just over a week into the protests that began on 25 January 2011, a colleague and I decided to roam around Cairo to get a sense of how the rest of the city was reacting to the events that led to its shutdown. We especially wanted to tour some of the shantytowns, where the more impoverished of the city's residents live, to see whether the protests were a strictly middle class movement.

One man from Old Cairo, who had yet to join any of the anti-Mubarak protests, was indignant when I stated in a matter-of-fact tone that he had not yet participated in the revolution.

"Of course I did. I went with everyone in my neighbourhood and brought my kids to throw rocks at the police station. We took out a lot of repressed anger on them that day," he said. The neighbourhood mob also broke out two teenage boys he claims had been unjustly arrested.

This neighbourhood was not the only one. One of the lesser-told - but immensely significant - manifestations of the Egyptian revolution was how police stations were used as proxies for the oppressive state.

For many living in poor, marginalised areas, these stations were as logical a destination as any to express their desire for regime change. 

In fact, the Interior Ministry under Mubarak had long been the most repressive arm of his regime in general society. It served to protect and serve power and wealth, while acting as a buffer between the elites and the "lower" socio-economic classes who were to be kept quiet.

Interior Ministry officials' sense of omnipotence was summarised in the catchphrase that we hear unfortunately all too often from police officers: "We are the masters of this country."

What is needed is profound institutional change

The need for police reform transcends any punitive measures or organisational shakeups. Changing the Interior Minister again will have no effect whatsoever. Similarly, that ministry cannot just choose a few officers to stand trial amid claims that they had dealt with these "individual transgressions".

What is needed is profound institutional change. Egypt boasts one of the largest per capita number of security officers. The lack of persistent cohesion within major government power centres brings with it the potential for an already defunct security apparatus to cause infinitely more damage in the future - if, for whatever reason, there are any further shifts in the power structure of the country.

The very first step should be changing the training structure of the police academy, from being a four-year military-style boot camp to one that encourages more interaction and more empathy with society.

The Darb ElAhmar residents were enraged following the shooting of the taxi driver, and put on a brave show of resistance to police abuses - both at their local police station and at the central Interior Ministry.

Similarly this week, more than 100 residents of another less-affluent neighbourhood in Old Cairo protested the case of a prisoner from their area dying during interrogation at a police station.

At this rate, local communities will no longer need prompting from huge protests in Tahrir Square to spark another wave of mass protest against corrupt and violent police practices.

Mohamed ElMeshad is a journalist and a PhD candidate at SOAS, focusing on the political economy of the media. He has worked extensively in Egypt, Bahrain, West Africa, the UK and US. Recently, he contributed to the Committee to Protect Journalists' book, Attacks on the Press (2015).