The unnamed officer was spotted slumped
over the wheel with a cider bottle between his legs and his car's blue lights
flashing
The picture that has been
circulating on social media Photo: Ben Heydenrych/Facebook
4:31PM BST 24 Aug 2015
South African police are facing embarrassment
after pictures of one of their officers slumped unconscious at the wheel of a
police car with a bottle of cider between his legs were circulated on Facebook
over the weekend.
The constable, who has not been
named, was spotted in an upmarket suburb in the city of Pietermaritzburg by a
man taking his son to a school sports event early on Saturday morning.
Ben Heydenrych said he was concerned
for the well-being of the officer since the police van’s blue lights were
flashing and he was unresponsive.
“The window was open and I could see
a head through the window. I reversed and shouted loudly three or four times,”
he wrote on Facebook.
“After I didn’t receive a response I
climbed out of my vehicle and approached the van. I thought that he could have
been dead or even shot himself. When I got close the passenger door was open
and I could see a Savannah (cider) bottle that was one-third full, between his
legs.”
Mr Heydenrych said he called the
police but before they arrived, two other men approached the car. He said the
pair shouted at the man and slapped him to try to wake him. He said they
eventually roused the officer by pouring the half-empty bottle over his head.
He claimed that a few minutes later,
the policeman started the car and drove away.
“You get good policemen and you get
bad policemen, but this is just ridiculous,” Mr Heydenrych said. “For someone
to be drunk at that part of the morning and be in that condition and parked off
like that as a policeman, in a police vehicle, you would have to be partying
right through the night. Policemen are supposed to serve and protect.”
Dianne Kohler Barnard,
the opposition Democratic Alliance’s shadow police minister, said she had referred the matter
to the police watchdog.
“This police officer had a firearm
on his hip. Anyone could have reached in and grabbed it,” she said.
A police spokesman said the officer
would be disciplined. “Such behaviour is unacceptable and cannot be tolerated
as it brings the image of the organisation into disrepute,” he said.
