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Iraqi police a law unto
themselves
By David Enders
BAGHDAD - At night, the police presence is most
evident. On the city's central streets, they make
high-speed patrols, at times in groups that make the
task appear more like a joyride. There are no other cars
to be seen and there's virtually no one on the streets,
save the employees of Baghdad's single 24-hour shop and
the handful of restaurants that stay open late, mostly
to serve the cops.
The police, however, do not
receive credit for the apparent drop in crime. "It's
because no one stays out," said Hassan Mahdi, the owner
of the 24-hour shop. "The police are no good."
But just because the streets are filled with
police does not necessarily mean they're safe. A
journalist walking back to his hotel at around 3am on a
recent morning made the mistaken assumption that it
would be fine because only police were out. He was
stopped and asked for his identity card three times
during the 10-minute stroll. The third group of police
also took US$100 from his wallet, after he showed an
American passport.
Accusations of police
corruption are rampant across the country. Iraqis
complain that police set up checkpoints for the sole
purpose of shakedowns, threatening arrest unless a bribe
is paid. In this city of more than 5 million, the police
were the first security body to be reinstated after the
invasion. The situation is being likened to the police
force before the invasion, which was known for its petty
corruption. "No one ever received traffic tickets before
the war," said Ahmad Ayad, who lives in Baghdad. "We
just paid the officer."
About 8,000 police work
inside Baghdad, a number that is expected to increase,
despite plans to continue reviewing the status of some
of the police who were officers before the invasion.
"Ninety-nine percent of those were police officers
before the war," said Bassem Hamid Mahmoud, a spokesman
for the chief of police.
At the police's
internal affairs office, Captain Rafid Daoud has handled
300 cases since July 20. There is no electricity, so he
cannot access the database of cases on his computer to
give a breakdown, but he says 25 officers have been
dismissed as a result of his investigations. "We try to
make the IP [Iraqi Police] clean," he said. "In our job,
there are many bad officers. We caught some who were
working with kidnappers."
He pauses to examine a
brand-new Glock pistol - the US military is slowly
equipping the police with the same pistol army officers
wear - and sighs. "We must clean our country of the
bad," he says. But as some efforts are being made to
shed old stigmas, the vase of flowers on Daoud's desk
speaks to a problem the police have never before faced.
Since May, at least 158 officers have been killed in
shootings or bombings targeting police. American troops
have lost over 200 soldiers to hostile fire during the
same time period.
"The Iraqi police have became
the only authority on the street, and because of that,
we are the enemy of the terrorists," Mahmoud said. Major
Imad Ismail is in command of the 60 officers at the
al-Adamiyah police station, which was attacked daily by
light arms or grenade fire until the Americans left it
about two months ago, drawing back to a pair of bases in
the neighborhood.
"The people were ready to
attack the police station," he said. "We still have to
convince them that we are independent of the Americans."
Outside of Baghdad, other problems persist.
"The
Americans are trying to use the police to conduct their
searches, but they won't inform on their neighbors,"
said Hussein, a police sergeant in Ramadi, a center of
resistance about 60 miles west of Baghdad where six
officers were killed in a June bombing. "One of my
neighbors was arrested by the Americans and he was
beaten while in jail. The Americans asked why I didn't
tell them about this man, but I can't inform on my
neighbors. The Americans are losing faith in the Iraqi
police here," Hussein said.
In some cases, the
police are also losing faith in the police. "Nobody pays
for my health care," said one officer as he sat in the
central police command office in Baghdad, holding a
bandaged hand wounded during a car bombing near the
Ministry of Interior in May. He is one of the at least
354 officers wounded in the past seven months. "I had to
spend $600 of my own money." The officer, who asked that
his name not be printed, said he worries about leaving
his children fatherless and that the pay is not suited
to the amount of danger. "Sure, I'm looking for another
job," he said. "I can drive a taxi."
"Our salary
is very low and this is a very bad situation - there is
inflation and we might lose our lives," said Raad
Salman, the chief of the al-Awiyah station in Baghdad.
"They told us they would increase our pay, but we have
not seen it yet. Sometimes the pay is 10 days late,
sometimes two weeks."
Current pay scales for a
normal officer are little more than $60 per month,
though Mahmoud said a pay raise is planned, to around
$100 in the coming months to more than double that
afterward, but officers say they will believe it when
they see it - in occupied Iraq, planned pay scales often
fail to materialize when promised. Mahmoud also said the
Ministry of the Interior will begin to pay medical costs
for injured officers, but they have to file a claim.
If an officers dies, his family is to receive
his retirement pension (about $60 a month), but this has
also been slow to take effect. US military police
sometimes collect money for the families, usually
between $100 and $200, the officers said.
In
some places, the police are overwhelmed to the point
they are asking other organizations for help. In
al-Thawra, the slum district formerly known as Saddam
City, the police are increasingly reliant on other local
groups to help them do their jobs. "The Badr troops
often make arrests for us," said Colonel Karim Hussein,
referring to the militia organized by the Supreme
Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a major
Shi'ite political group. "They are training to help us
do our jobs."
But meanwhile, the police may not
be doing much to help their case. Police station prisons
are often overcrowded, and complaints of police beating
prisoners with electrical wire are not uncommon. Daoud,
however, said he had received no reports of this.
"They say I am a kidnapper," said Abo Ibrahim,
who has been in a crowded common cell at the al-Adamiyah
police station for two months with about 40 other men.
"The treatment here is good, at the last station I was
beaten and tortured."
Chuck Ryan, the Coalition
Provisional Authority's deputy director of prisons, said
Ministry of Justice officials, with the help of newly
arrived American staff to help oversee the continued
setting-up of Iraq's prison system, would be touring
police station jails in the coming months, checking for
overcrowded conditions and determining whether they
should be left under police department control or placed
under the authority of the Ministry of Justice.
"We haven't heard any allegations of torture,"
Ryan said. "But will I say it doesn't happen? Of course
not. Will I say that it happens as much and in the
manner it did under Saddam [Hussein]? I believe that it
doesn't."
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd.
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