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The memories of policeman Mohamed, 44 years of gray, brown and blue

2022-01-18T13:18:47.942Z


He was gray, he escorted the judges of 23-F and frequented the same mosque as those responsible for 11-M, the history of this agent serves to review that of Madrid, the city in which he has served for almost half a century


Plaza de las Ventas, day of the bullfight, 1980s. A group of national police officers stands in line in front of their superior while he calls the list of agents.

“Mohamed Dris!” he utters.

They all look at each other to find out who is behind such an unusual name on the body.

The aforementioned remembers it today with a clean laugh.

"It's me, it's me," he said, greeting his teammates every time a scene like this was repeated.

Dris has just retired after 44 years at the Arganzuela police station, which was formerly known as "la del Rastro".

His current colleagues and those who once shared service with him bid him farewell to applause, while he struggled not to cry.

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The inspector who enjoys the crime scene

Its history is that of a Spain that went from gray to color. And never better said, because he entered the force as part of the Armed Police, the well-known

grays

and s

symbol for many of repression, a few months before it disappeared. It was in the military that he was offered the chance to join the force and it seemed like a good option to him. In Melilla, where he was born, he worked as a waiter in a bar where agents used to go, and that familiarity that he developed behind the bar made him take that step. He still remembers his first patrol, along Mesón de Paredes street, in Lavapiés. “I was going with a veteran, he was a skinny, skinny 21-year-old guy in that gray suit,” he describes. He also tells how once at the end of the shift they would party at the Molino Rojo, the traditional cabaret in the same neighborhood where he started his patrols. And that he did not drink because of his religion. "We were in uniform, something that is now impossible," he says.

His name attached to his uniform continues to attract attention, as it did among those who formed with him in the surroundings of Las Ventas. "I know that it can attract attention that he is a Muslim policeman, but look, now there is a police station in Jaen whose last name is like me, and we are not cousins!", he laughs. It refers to Layla Dris, who has just been appointed number two of the National Police in that city and is from Melilla like the agent. “I have not felt racism, although it is true that I am known among my colleagues because there are not many Mohamed. Some citizen who has come to denounce has indeed released things like: 'A Moor has robbed me!' My colleagues stared at me, but it didn't bother me, I've always attributed it to that person being very pissed off about what just happened to him,” explains this overflowingly optimistic policeman.

Mohamed Dris, in his early years as a police officer in Madrid.

The almost half-century of history of this policeman in a uniform that was first gray, then brown and now blue is also that of a body and a city that has seen it grow and evolve. In its beginnings, the Rastro was a very conflictive area. "Every week there were messes, there were the guerrillas of Cristo Rey, for example (the extreme right-wing paramilitary group at the end of the Franco regime)," he says. Now it is a very coveted area to live in and Rastro Sundays are not days of brawls and riots, far from it. “All of this did not exist, there was a wall there,” he says about some of the streets adjacent to his police station. At that time, they did not even have cars in the Police for patrols. "There was one or two, we went everywhere by bus or subway." They were going to make rounds on foot to Orcasitas, the neighborhood that in the eighties was throwing away its last shacks,and to get there they went by public transport. Now, there is a long line of police vehicles parked in front of his station.

heroin and terrorism

He also experienced the ravages of heroin. "It was horrible, every week you found someone you knew dead, because of course, from stopping them so much, they were already familiar to you," he continues. He was even an escort for the judges who sentenced the coup plotter Antonio Tejero and his accomplices for 23-F. "A lot of tension, I remember a lot of tension," he says, shaking his head. And of course ETA. “Colleagues from my promotion have died, one of them here next door, near the Vicente Calderón,” he points with his finger. He was no stranger to Islamic terrorism and the tension between religions that was experienced at the time of 11-M. "It was difficult. I went to pray at the mosque that was next door, where some of those responsible for that also went. I knew them by sight and later I was able to talk to the brother of one of them, who had an electronics store,and he denied that he had anything to do with it”, he recalls.

In recent times, he was in charge of the police station dungeons. There, he spoke from time to time with the detainees. Some of them, very young, because in these 44 years of career he has also witnessed the increase in juvenile delinquency in the region. “I saw some of them laughing because they came from hitting each other, while their mother was upstairs crying without understanding why her son had done it, and I told them, if you want to be a man you should worry about her, instead of getting into trouble. I think that something did make them reflect”, he points out. To others arrested, he has indicated where Mecca was so that they could pray behind bars. Something that he has also done inside the police station. "Yes, yes, we have seen him doing ablutions and his prayers," says Ana, one of his companions. "God tells you that work comes first,so if one day I haven't been able to, then I've recovered at home, and when you've missed a lot of prayers, then it's a bit long”, he laughs again.

At 65 years old, he begins a retired life to which he has not yet become accustomed.

And that he has occupations, such as his dedication to making homemade creams based on spices and natural products.

He has been distributing them to all his colleagues and acquaintances for years and ensures that they leave a perfect complexion.

He goes through the police station's gatehouse and picks up two jars that he keeps there and that look like jars.

“My effects are still in my locker, right?” he asks them.

You are still thinking about how you will organize your life from now on.

He assures that he has to decide with his wife, a Filipina and a Christian.

"They are in charge!", He assures, again, with a smile.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-01-18

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