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‘Officer
lucky to get away with fine’
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A PRETORIA High Court judge slammed the police for brutality and
voiced his dissatisfaction at the “complete disrespect” displayed to a family
when he turned down an appeal by a police constable against her conviction
for assault.
This was after 30 cops – 29 women and one man – raided the home of a Limpopo spaza shop owner who they suspected had been selling alcohol illegally. They could only find one crate of beer in the house, which the owner said was for his own consumption. The police did not only force the man to pay a R300 fine on the spot, but one of the group, Constable Raesibe Bushy Montjane, assaulted the homeowner’s daughter. She was sprayed in the face with pepper spray, slapped and kicked. This was all because she was “disrespectful” towards the police officers. Theresho Mashabela was so badly injured that she had to receive treatment at a local hospital. Judge Pieter van der Byl said he was satisfied that what the evidence showed was nothing else but police brutality and total disrespect for the family’s privacy. “The accused can regard herself lucky that she was not convicted on a charge of assault with the intent to do grievous bodily harm,” said Judge Van der Byl. He added that the cop was also lucky that she didn’t receive a heftier sentence than a R500 fine. “It boggles the mind why such an extraordinarily large contingent consisting of 30 police officers was, amid the unacceptable wave of serious crime in our country, assigned to search the house of the witness and to force him to pay a fine of R300 after having found a measly case of beer in their house,” said the judge. Theresho Mashabela earlier testified in a Limpopo magistrate’s court that she was at her parents’ home on July 22, 2010, washing dishes, when the cops arrived at the house. Her father, Hendrik Mashabela, testified that the police arrived at his spaza shop and bought food. He thought they were going to eat their food before leaving, but the next moment, he heard his daughter screaming from the main house. He ran to her aid and found her handcuffed. When he asked the cops what they were doing in his house, they said they “searched nowadays”, and that they did not provide a search warrant because “people would hide things”. Montjane admitted they searched the house for alcohol but denied assaulting the girl. By Zelda Venter The Star 03/04/13 Early Edition |
Sunday, July 5, 2015
Crimes of the South African Police Service
