CAIRO, Egypt — It seems police here have finally had enough.

Earlier this month — following more than a month of clashes between security forces and protesters, in which at least two policemen died — riot police and regular officers started a near-nationwide strike to protest intolerable working conditions and what they say is their role as political pawns in the government’s fight with the opposition.

Egyptians say they’ve noticed little difference with the police, whose notorious brutality spawned the uprising here two years ago, now that they’re off the streets. Their presence often provoked more violence anyway, they say.

But the mutiny has also given rise to alarming calls by officials for “popular committees” — or militias — and private security companies to both legally and informally assume police duties to fill the vacuum.

Residents here are worried government-sanctioned vigilantism will pave the way for further chaos and a possible collapse of the state.

“If militias come out, this means that the state has collapsed,” said 55-year-old Ahmed Mohammed Mustafa, the owner of a fruit and vegetable stand near some of the most intense clashes in Cairo in recent weeks. “Nobody can stop them from coming into our neighborhoods and doing whatever they want. How are we supposed to know who they are?”

The unprecedented police strike — which has subsided temporarily in the capital but continues in other provinces — poses a serious challenge for the already teetering government of President Mohamed Morsi.

Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood group he once led has sought to co-opt the largely anti-Islamist interior ministry during their time in power, deploying them to use the same methods as their dictatorial predecessor and abandoning calls for police reform.

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