Empoverished
white woman tried to sell her DVD-player for food: arrested, criminalised by
Alberton cops, brutalised, dumped in police cell…
An impoverished ‘white’
woman who was walking with her boyfriend on Clinton Road on Tuesday May 24,
trying to exchange their DVD-player for food for the day, were arrested for
“being drunk in public’ by men who never identified themselves as cops, put
hand- and footcuffs on her, and threw her in a jailcell for the night. There’s
no indication that she was breathalysed or blood-tested, reported LookLocal reporter
Malcolm Maifala on 21 June 2011.
She was too terrified to
provide her name or to lodge charges, she told the journalist. . She said the
arrest was wrongful: they were not drunk at all: they were merely poor and
hungry, walking on Clinton road behind the Boma on Tuesday May 24 when two
black Golf-vehicles approached them. “The two cars stopped next to us, the men
– not dressed in police uniforms and who did not identity themselves as
police-officers – demanded to know what we had in our backpacks. When my
boyfriend told them there was a DVD player in the bag, the men said ‘that is
not yours’. That is when they took my boyfriend into the one car.” she
said. The woman was taken to a separate car with three men inside. According to
the woman, she objected because she didn’t know they were cops and thought they
were going to rape her: “There was no way I was going into a car with three men
I didn’t know,” I told them. She was treated very roughly and cursed: she got
handcuffs clapped on her wrists and ankles, and it hurt badly, she said. They
were taken to Alberton Police Station where they spent the night in the cells.
“How was I supposed to know they were the police? They weren’t dressed in their
uniforms and didn’t identify themselves as such.” The woman also claims that
she was brutalised by the police. Alberton captain George Rapula insisted that
the ‘woman and her boyfriend were drunk in public. ‘ He did not say whether a
breathalyser test was done. He also did not say whether she and the boyfriend
were given blood-tests for alcohol abuse. He accused the woman of ‘resisting
arrest: they had to cuff her hands and feet.’ He denied that any of the police
officers had’tried to rape her’. The woman said she
was too terrified to lay a charge against the police, fearing further
victimisation.
