Between the ranks

On October 5, the second day of the Eid Al-Adha holiday, nine policemen were referred to investigation in the city of Minya, two of them on charges of sexually harassing a woman, with the remaining seven accused of preventing the woman from reporting the incident at the police station. Less than a month earlier, another policeman was referred to criminal trial for raping a mentally ill woman at the Imbaba police station. Around the same time, three policemen were referred to investigation for desecrating a corpse at a Qalyubia morgue after a video of the incident surfaced on local websites.

Stories like these flooded media outlets over the past two months. And while police misconduct is nothing new, what seemed unfamiliar was the quick response by the Ministry of Interior in identifying the policemen and referring them to investigation as local media shed light on these crimes.

The Ministry of Interior released a statement in late September, saying that it doesn’t “cover up any incident committed by policemen. The ministry takes the necessary actions to investigate policemen strictly and transparently, assuring that such anomalies and individual incidents are addressed, and that deterrent measures are taken against all those involved in committing them.”

Additionally, Minister of Interior Mohamed Ibrahim said in a press conference that the ministry holds its personnel accountable more than any other government institution in Egypt, adding that the ministry does not cover up any mistakes.

According to Hoda Nasrallah, a lawyer with the Criminal Justice Unit at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), only one police officer, Mohamed al-Shenawy, who is known as the eye-sniper, has been convicted in the aftermath of the January 25 uprising and is currently serving his three year sentence. According to EIPR’s figures, a total of 186 policemen were charged of killing and injuring protesters, 115 of whom were acquitted, 51 were charged in cases where a verdict is yet to be issued, and 20 have been indicted.

Out of those 20, five were sentenced in absentia, and 13 received a suspended sentence.

Nasrallah explains that the reason why Shenawy was an exception is because the evidence against him was given to the prosecution by regular citizens who had identified and videotaped him. “The prosecution sent his description to the Ministry of Interior, and the ministry claimed that they had no one with this description,” she adds.

On the other hand, the ministry was quick to identify the three policemen in the video filmed at the morgue and referred them to investigation within days.

“We’re going through a very tough time,” says low-ranking policeman Hassan Shandy, who claims that there is an ongoing media campaign against lower ranking policemen. Every time they schedule an interview with satellite channels to explain their perspective, it mysteriously gets cancelled last minute., he adds.

He even says that when there is a policeman speaking on air on their behalf, they are usually not members of the General Coalition for Policemen, of which Shandy is a leading member, and are not authorized to represent them.

Shandy points to the Ministry of Interior’s double standards when addressing violations between different ranks. As soon as the video showing the policemen desecrating the body at the morgue appeared, the ministry was quick to name all three of them and refer them to investigation. However, earlier in August when police officers shot and killed four passengers of a car along the Alexandria-Matrouh road after mistaking them for assailants responsible for an armed attack that killed five police personnel, the ministry’s statement did not condemn the officers nor did it see to their punishment.

Additionally, Shandy also notes that policemen are constantly accused of belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood and of assisting them in leaking information, when in fact the majority of those caught being informants have been police officers of higher ranks.

“There are good police officers and bad police officers, just like there are good policemen and bad policemen,” says Shandy. “But our numbers are 10 times as much, we form 91 percent of the police force, therefore the faults of the police officers are relatively more than the policemen.”

However, Shandy adds that the violations of police officers are treated as individual mistakes while those of policemen are used to form generalizations about all lower-ranking policemen.

Aly al-Raggal, a researcher specialized in topics related to security, reiterates that there is a movement against lower-ranking policemen from the authorities lately.

Raggal says that there could be multiple reasons behind this, including the fact that these policemen have become a sort of burden on the Ministry of Interior and are causing them trouble as they deal directly with regular citizens. “Any new regime cannot handle the consequences of these violations,” he adds.

“What I’ve been hearing from officers is that there is a state of loathing against the lower-ranking policemen,” says Raggal. “They have been trying to get the message across that the officers are educated, while the policemen are ignorant and barbaric.”

However, low-ranking policeman Yasser Mohamed disagrees with that notion. Mohamed has been working on a draft law for the past two years to allow for policemen with higher qualifications to move up in the ranks. The draft was approved by the Minister of Interior, and later passed on to the Shura Council, which was dissolved before they could approve it.

Mohamed, who has earned a post-graduate degree, says, “I’m a man who worked hard and studied at not one but two colleges and I haven’t gotten anything in return.”

Instead, Mohamed complains that all policemen are lumped into one category and people’s ignorance about the police force does not allow them to differentiate between traffic policemen, policemen who work at police stations and those who serve at other police departments.

According to Raggal, some of the policemen’s desire and requests for more rights could be another reason behind the ministry choosing to highlight their violations recently.

Bodies such as the General Coalition for Policemen did not exist prior to the year 2011, and through it, as well as sit-ins and protests organized by policemen over the past three years, policemen have been able to guarantee themselves some basic rights that they did not enjoy before.

“When we started the coalition, there were no financial guarantees or medical insurance and we have managed to reach a good place, and achieve historic development,” says Shandy.

However, Shandy says that while there is still a long way to go, some are growing more and more opposed to the idea of granting policemen some of the rights they are seeking.

“We have a schedule of rights to fulfill, but we started having to deal with people who do not want our existence. I still have some rights that have not been fulfilled, while they are trying to create a sense of defeat or frustration for us,” he says.

Raggal explains, “Essentially, lower-ranking policemen were the ministry’s dogs that they unleashed on society, but now they want more money and rights.”

Instead, the Ministry of Interior is perhaps looking to tighten the grip on them, he said.

At the same time that the media was publishing reports on violations of policemen, there were also floating reports on a draft law that would have essentially created a separate police judiciary to prosecute conscripts and lower-ranking policemen rather than have them go through military trials. However, on October 9, privately owned Al-Shorouk newspaper reported that the law was rejected by the State Council and conscripts would be subject to military trials instead.

According to Shandy, military trials for police personnel were deemed unconstitutional in 2012 seeing as the police is a civil body. Prior to that, however, police officers were prosecuted through disciplinary councils while policemen would be prosecuted through military trials for any violation they commit.

Nasrallah explains that, prior to 2012, if a policeman was absent from work or rubbed his superior officer the wrong way then they would be referred to military trial and the punishment could be time behind bars. However, if a policeman is involved in a case with a higher-ranking police officer, then his case is referred to civil court along with the officer, she adds.

“We want an alternative disciplinary council,” says Shandy. “Otherwise, some of the policemen’s minor violations at work are treated as crimes, so if he gets into a fight with a police officer then he could be referred on criminal charges.”

Shandy points out that discussion over the draft law occurred in parallel with the media’s focus on police violations and their prosecution.

Raggal agrees. “Back in the day, there used to be an attempt to defend everyone but with more and more time, divisions within the Ministry of Interior began to show,” he says.

However, Raggal admits that it could be a good thing to keep policemen in check, seeing as how they were Hosni Mubarak’s regime’s “heroes.”

“The problem with military rule is that even if it is in your own interest, they still won’t tell you what is happening,” he says.

But for policemen, this new movement is definitely not in their best interest as they claim that the force has been reformed since the revolution in 2011, and particularly after June 30, 2013, making an attack on them is unwarranted.

“I don’t think the media is telling the truth,” says Mohamed, a policeman. “Just because a policeman hit or killed someone doesn't mean we shouldn't know the full story. Besides, don’t all ministries have bad people working in them?”