This week on social media yet another disturbing video appeared with the SA Police Service in the starring roles as protagonist, court, judge and jury.
The back story starts a number of weeks ago in Umgababa on the Kwa-Zulu Natal South Coast.
A licensed tavern selling small time stops of Dagga under the counter to their patrons has, in recent times, been paying protection money to the local cops to lubricate the wheels of Dagga prohibition.
As is always the case in these circumstances, everything is fine until the thugs in blue don’t get what they demand.
We spoke to the wife of the Rastafarian in the video this week, (and recorded the phone call for the record), and she told us the trouble started when they refused to pay yet another bunch of cops looking for some doughnut money.
Recently, there had been more and more cops coming more and more of the time, presumably because they knew they had a ‘live one’, and the couple just plain and simple had no more cash flow to extort.
The thing we find really concerning, is the sheer force in numbers. It was mentioned to us on the phone that over 10 police vans pulled in for this beating with a sjambok. A beating which, by the way, resulted in three cracked ribs.
If you consider there are only three police stations on the Natal South Coast, this can only suggest an enormous percentage of S. Coast resources being deployed for this extortion indaba.
The victim, who was charged with possession of Dagga the week before, but had the charges ‘withdrawn’ by a magistrate, must have really got up the nostrils of the S. Natal rottweiler union. No protection money AND a sympathetic court official.
The husband and wife tavern owners feared some form of retribution, so rigged a camera angle for the next time the cops arrived. They did – more than a dozen of them, men and women. Most of the uniforms in the footage are just watching and presumably learning the ropes in preparation for when they’re big enough to extort their own liquor tavern.
It can clearly be seen that the monster with the sjambok is omnipotent. Even the captain in charge (recognised as being from Umkomaas Police Station) looks on, completely desensitised to the situation.
The elephant in the room is obviously the fact that the police should be arresting ‘drug dealers’ and protecting their communities from the ‘scourge of drugs’. Realistically though, if you’re despised by your community and shot at all week for less that fifteen grand a month on average – the temptations of the prohibition system are too much for the average cop to resist most of the time. This phenomena isn’t unique to SA. Drug prohibition is, after all, the number one breeding ground for corruption worldwide.
No wonder there are more cops leaving the service than joining. It must be an awful burden on the ‘good cops’ conscience watching this endemic thuggery within our underpaid, demotivated, role model-less police service – and saying nothing.
This incident differs from others we’ve dealt with because the tavern owners are standing their ground and have contacted the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID).
The Directorate have already started a formal investigation and have visited the local police station.
We are in Whatsapp contact on the ground with these brave victims of physical assault at the hands of the ‘protect and serve’ crew and will assist wherever we can.
After all, in the words of last year’s Police head honcho, we have to make things unbearable for the criminals of South Africa, and whatever you think of the video, you have to admit, there are some serious criminal offences taking place.
Protection? Maybe. But only if the price is right on the night…… Oh, and by the way – is Dagga prohibition working for you?
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