CAIRO: A new initiative for restructuring the police called for treating the police as a civil body as per the constitution, in a press conference held Monday. The Police for Egypt initiative called for appointing a civilian minister of interior from outside the police force, and altering the police academy into “civil and open academies” where graduates from law school can be accepted as students and trained for a year and a half. The initiative also recommended establishing multiple police academies in the different governorates, rather than having only one in Cairo. "The police have now become estranged from the Egyptian society. The relationship between the people and the police was especially reflected through the events of Jan. 28 and the withdrawal of the police," said Ghada Shahbandar from the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights and one of the founders of the initiative. The police withdrew from around Tahrir Square on Jan. 28 and later seemed to disappear from the country leading to a security vacuum that the country is yet to recover from. Shahbandar said that the initiative was primarily launched in July to reform the police force as a step towards reforming other institutions in the country, but later experts said its objectives needed some modification. The initiative was launched by a group of people from different professional backgrounds. "We combine talent with professionalism to provide a comprehensive take on the matter instead of covering it from one angel," Shahbandar said. Police for Egypt comprises activists from the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), the Honorable Police Officers Coalition and some businessmen. "We decided to launch this initiative when we found that nothing has changed inside the Ministry of Interior since it collapsed on Jan. 28, which means that there is a professional defect that requires a set of drastic measures," former lieutenant Colonel Mohamed Mahfouz of the Honorable Police Officers Coalition told Daily News Egypt. Alaa Soueif, from the initiative, said that the Egyptian public awaited the interior ministry to take real steps to guarantee the cleansing of the police force and the change of its philosophy. "According to the minister's [Mansour El-Essawy] statements, we [agree] on the importance of reforming the ministry and the police forces. Yet, he did not do anything to guarantee this change," he said. Police officers on the other hand, Mahfouz said, have been suffering from bad economic conditions, lack of job stability, lack of modern technology and equipment, and military trials for low-ranking policemen along with the injury and death of honest officers. The initiative outlined a set of immediate actions along with a number of long-term procedures that aim to reform the police force and the Ministry of Interior. The immediate procedures include the separation of the National Security apparatus from the Ministry of Interior, suspending the officers accused of killing protesters, and referring the members of the Supreme Council for Police and the deputies of the security chiefs to a disciplinary board. "The Minister of Interior has the authority to suspend the accused officers, transfer them to a disciplinary body ... He did not use any of these authorities," Mahfouz said. The initiative also advised that the minister should acknowledge the presence of snipers affiliated with the ministry which he had denied. Mahfouz asserted that every officer knows that there are snipers affiliated with the ministry, specifically within the international terrorism unit and the special operations unit in the state security body. "Those urgent measures aim at restoring the security presence with a new face that would side with the citizen," Mahfouz said, stressing on the importance of cleansing the ministry from corrupt officers. Mahfouz said that the main procedures that can be applied on the long-run are redrawing the job description of police officers as it crossed the limits set by the law; thereby resetting the police force as an orderly civil body, since it has been “militarized” for decades which had drastic consequences. "The society turns into a battlefield, the citizens turn into enemies and the police turn into an occupation authority. This is how the military is programmed," he said. The initiative also called for preventing the interference of the ministry in various societal issues like lottery pilgrimage, transportation, taxes, passports and immigration among other issues. "This leads to forming a police state," Mahfouz told DNE. "We have been calling upon political parties and presidential candidates to add these measures to their programs and to cooperate with us," said Magda Botrous of EIPR and one of the main founders of the Police for Egypt initiative. Mohamed Selim El-Awa, presidential hopeful, wrote a letter to the initiative saying that it is a comprehensive work plan that is worth implementing. "If officials adopted it, it will save years of chaos," he wrote. "We sent our worksheet to the military council ruling the country, the Prime Minister and Essawy who initially promised us he would cooperate, but asked for enough time to study the possible means of cooperation," Shahbandar added.
