An open line of communication is what is needed between police and regular citizens.
Too often, when a police officer is involved in alleged wrongdoing, things seem to be kept quite hush-hush, and you find the authorities play their cards close to their chests.
The understanding that most of us have in this country is that no one is above the law, but, in practice, that doesn’t seem to be true.
If one citizen opens a case against another for a common assault charge, normally you would expect the police to immediately arrest the accused.
But it seems as though things don’t follow that same pattern when police are on the opposite end of the stick.
Mthandazo Mbuluka accused a Melkbosstrand police officer of assault and calling him the K-word. No arrests have been made yet.
Last year in January, two Milnerton officers were charged with rape after they were accused of doing an illegal cavity search on a man in Sanddrift (“Rape charge against Milnerton cops,” Tabletalk, January 24, 2018).
In that case, as well, the police had not been arrested or suspended two weeks after the incident. Are police held to a higher standard than the average Joe? The answer to that should be a definite no.