Huge payout after police bungling
April 17, 2012
INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPERS
Two men appeared in the Sekhukhune Magistrate’s Court near Burgersfort in connection with the murder of Cope MP Jack Tolo.
The taxpayer is expected to pay millions in damages to a group of security guards following bungling by the police who, during student riots in Mafikeng, detained 19 of them.
The guards were placed in custody for nine days on a vague suspicion that they stole some of the students’ belongings.
Some members of the group, by way o
f statements before the Pretoria High Court, told their harrowing tale of how they were for no reason stuffed into overcrowded police cells and had to endure “intimate” body searches by members of the SAPS.
Some were subjected to harsh treatment by other inmates, who pushed their heads into the toilet bowl while assaulting them, while others had to surrender their food as fights broke out in the cells during meal times.
The police, in five of the cases before court, agreed to pay R190 000 in damages to five of the security guards. The cases of the others are still due to go before court.
A judge who last year heard the evidence of one of the guards arrested in September 2008, together with his colleagues, at the time posed some sharp questions over the conduct of the police.
Judge Stanley Sapire at the time said the police should not arrest and
Article Source: North West
http://www.southafricanews24.co.za/huge-payout-after-police-bungling/
