TEMBISA SOUTH POLICE ALLEGEDLY ASSAULT COMPLAINANTS OPENING A CASE

After Lesego Phela was assaulted by a taxi driver on Sunday evening, she and her boyfriend Innocent Mokubedi went to Tembisa South Police Station to report the crime.

But upon arrival, instead of getting help from the law, the couple said they were assaulted, pepper-sprayed, kicked and stomped!

Lesego told Scrolla.Africa that after spending the evening at an end-of-year Christmas party in Benoni with her colleagues, she booked a taxi to take her and her six colleagues home.

However, things started going south in the cab back home.

“On arrival back in Tembisa around midnight, there was an argument with the taxi driver that ended physically and I was assaulted with a beer bottle.”

After getting thrown out of the taxi, Lesego said she called her boyfriend who picked them up and took them straight to the police station to open an assault case against the taxi driver.

What the group didn’t know was that all hell was about to break loose in the one place that’s supposed to keep law and order – the police station.

“When we arrived, we explained to the police who were on duty about our ordeal. They were on their phones playing music and giving us no attention.”

She said she told the police what they had been through, but the police just laughed them off and returned to their phones.
After three hours of waiting, the group lost their patience. Lesego and her friends stormed into the charge office and demanded to be heard.

But that didn’t go down well, and several of the officers became aggressive. The situation quickly grew out of control, and the officers allegedly tried to push the group out of the station.

But when members of the group pulled out their phones and began filming the commotion, the officers flew into a rage.

“They grabbed innocent and pushed him on the floor,” recounted Lesego.
Before she knew it, she was then being pepper-sprayed on the floor of the station and, according to Innocent, “dragged like a dead dog.”

Innocent said that a female officer at the scene then “pushing her like a bag of a maize meal.”

Eventually they were allowed to leave, Innocent says, but things went from bad to worse when they returned on Monday to open a case against the police and they were put under arrest as the police had already opened a case against them!

Gauteng provincial police spokesperson Captain Kay Makhubele confirmed the incident. He said the police opened a case of interference of police officers’ duties while members of the public opened a case of assault against the police.

He said the case against the police has been transferred to the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID).

Video https://youtu.be/B9tJIrWLuuQ

By Everson Luhanga for Scrolla.Africa