AP Photo

The deep-seated animosity towards the police and security forces is rooted in years of confrontation with fans in the stadiums in what amounted to a battle of control for public space and in factories where workers asserted their rights as well as in the fact that police and security officials were the ones that made life difficult in popular neighborhoods of Egyptian cities. The resulting popular anger may well have boiled over in Port Said on the day of the sentencing of the Al Masri fans with witnesses reporting that two policemen were the first to die on the city’s streets.