more anecdotes of crime

A member of a committee that I chair can’t come to the meeting today, because her apartment was broken into last night and she lost a digital camera and some cash.

Last week, someone became mildly upset when I suggested that the crime rate had risen in Cairo. She said it was already getting bad before the Revolution but that the news was suppressed, and that it was only pro-Mubarak people who are trying to claim that crime is higher now that our good “stable” President is out of office.

I can understand concerns of information manipulated for political reasons. But that sword cuts both ways. I have no numbers at my disposal, but it seems beyond question that crime is far more rampant at the moment than it was. That’s to be expected, and is not an indictment of the Revolution. The police are now hated and demoralized and to some extent ashamed of themselves, so it’s not surprising that they would be thinned in numbers and not doing their jobs too diligently at the moment. But this is a problem that the next President and Parliament will need to tackle immediately.

You’d think in the abstract that tanks on the street would mean strict law enforcement. Not really. It does mean summary trials and harsh sentences for the few who are captured, but the army isn’t very good at capturing many of them.