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Are Zambian Police Brutal, Really?
By Charles Chisala
LAST week I shared with you a story from the Washington Post on how a lone female police officer employed positive community policing to defuse an imminent physical clash between two groups of teenagers in Washington DC.
The officer challenged one of the teenagers, a 17-year-old high school student, to a dancing contest. “If you win, you all stay but if I win you all disperse,” she challenged the youth who was taunting her, and it was a deal.
The two rival groups turned their attention to the dancing bout between the girl and the police officer.
After 10 minutes of Nae Nae dance the girl got tired and quit. Both she and the officer claimed to have won and hugged each other. The teenagers dispersed in peace.
I shared the story because lately our police have been ducking under barrages of flak from some citizens and organisations who have accused them of brutality.
I am not the spokesperson of the Zambia Police Service, but as a free citizen, a journalist and former police officer I feel duty-bound to express my personal views on the matter.
The champions of human rights have been ignoring the police’s constitutional and statutory mandate to maintain law and order.
Personally, I don’t agree that Zambian police are brutal and unprofessional, although some individual officers have committed excesses here and there.
I have been to several southern African countries and I can safely assert that our police are among the most professional in the region.
In most cases they have exercised maximum restraint when enforcing the law and restoring order despite coming under extreme provocation. Examples abound.
Imagine a horde of unruly political party cadres storming the divisional police headquarters in the capital city, Lusaka, to witness the interview of their leader.
They budge through a human cordon of officers, some of them armed, and engage in physical tussles with them for trying to restrain them.
Mind you a police station is a gazzetted and protected security installation.
Some overzealous cadres violently push and even try to punch a police officer for trying to stop them.
Rioting students are pictured kicking a fallen police officer.
Acting on a rumour that a suspect has died in detention and that police are holding ritual murderers residents descend on the police stations, breaking anything in their path and send officers scampering for safety.
A police officer is almost stoned to death while several others are seriously injured by residents for trying to persuade them to stop rioting in protest of the death of another resident in a road accident.
In another incident a leader of a political party is scheduled to appear in court to answer some charges. A whole army of his cadres defy police counsel and try to budge into the court premises by force under the pretext of solidarity.
In half of the African countries I have visited all these incidents would have resulted in deaths because police would easily have resorted to the use of lethal force to preserve peace, order and public safety.
But in most cases the Zambian police have been so lenient with the rioters that some people have even heaped scorn on them for being “too soft”.
Notwithstanding the fact that they have been managing the mobs without modern crowd management tools and skills.
What the vocal critics should appreciate is that there is no law in Zambia that says police officers should timidly kneel down in front of law breakers and plead with them to stop breaking the law, or ask suspects of crime for permission to arrest them.
If that is what being “professional” means then I disagree! Police are there to enforce the law, not to ‘negotiate’ with law breakers.
The law allows the police to use ‘appropriate’ force to restore order or prevent the breach of peace.
When I was going through my basic and advanced police training years ago my instructors taught me one thing I have never forgotten:
That a group of 10 or more people who have gathered to carry out a common purpose that threatens public peace or safety is called “a mob”. And that I should fear a mob as much as I should an armed individual.
“When 10 or more unarmed people gather to carry out a common purpose that threatens public peace or safety you should fear them as you would an individual armed with a fire arm.
“They constitute a negative force and a danger to the public, which should be neutralised. The mob can harm innocent citizens or disarm you and turn your own weapon on you if you are weak,” our instructors in Law and Police Duties used to emphasise.
They said the rights of the larger public supersede that of the unruly few.
That’s what I learned at Mindolo Mine Police Training School and Kamfinsa Police College in Kitwe, which still makes a lot of sense to me.
Allowing a few people to break the law with impunity, or treating law breakers as if they are heroes is not being professional, if that is what the police critics mean.
My instructors at Kamfinsa taught me that if a suspect – armed or unarmed – is running away from you and defies your orders to stop, including your warning shot, you should shoot him in the legs to incapacitate him and then apprehend him. To some self-styled human rightists that is brutality, unprofessional.
Another thing my instructors taught me was that if a suspect is resisting arrest and you have a short or long baton the law permits you to hit him hard in the legs and arms – from the toes to the thighs and from fingertips to the shoulders – to render him incapable of using them.
I am yet to know if this has changed, but please give the hard working cops a break for once. They are among the most professional in the region.
Posted by Editor
on November 9, 2015. Filed under LATEST NEWS.
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ishilu
November 9, 2015 at 6:58 am
walasafye nga mukela
kabaso p
November 9, 2015 at 6:58 am
gud observation
spy chief
November 9, 2015 at 7:01 am
there is some sense in what you are saying but it doesn’t work like that. if you incapacitate the suspect and then after investigating and court process in found not guilty are you going to be feeding him when you break his leg? nimwana wa nyoko kuti umutyole mwendo? use latest technology like a teser, helicopter, drone survelance and street cameras to curb criminals. there is need to put the whole police department under review so that we romove such draconian old training and teaching manuals. ours is a police service not a police force.
webman
November 9, 2015 at 7:30 am
Wasted space
COONDE
November 9, 2015 at 7:57 am
ZAMBIAN POLICE OFFICERS ARE MISCHIEVOUS AND BRUTAL, PERIOD. IN FACT, IN COUNTRIES SUCH AS BOTSWANA POLICE OFFICERS ARE NOT ARMED, AND THERE IS HIGHLY ADMIRABLE HARMONY BETWEEN POLICE AND THE PUBLIC. IN ZAMBIA POLICE OFFICERS ARE HIGHLY BRUTAL. THEY BEAT UP INNOCENT CITIZENS ON MARE SUSPICION OF SOME FELONY OR MISDEMEANOR. ZAMBIAN POLICE OFFICERS ARE HIGHLY UNPROFESSIONAL WHO JUST ACT ON IMPULSE AND EMOTIONS, NOT ON PROFESSIONAL ETHICS. WE NEED A KNEW GOVERNMENT THAT UPHOLDS THE RULE OF LAW EVEN BY POLICE OFFICERS THEMSELVES WHO CURRENTLY ACT AS BEING ABOVE THE LAW. ZAMBIA POLICE NEEDS A COMPLETE OVERHAUL DO DESTROY COLONIAL MENTALITY WHICH STILL EXIST IN OUR POLICE INSTITUTION IN OUR COUNTRY. ABASH POLICE BRUTALITY ABASH! ABASH CRIMINAL ACTS ON INNOCENT CITIZENS ABASH! ZAMBIA IS A FREE NATION, AND EVERY INNOCENT ZAMBIAN SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO ENJOY THAT FREEDOM.
ackim sasu
November 9, 2015 at 8:28 am
Ba spy chief mwendepula imbafu @ ni mwana wa nyoko?
Kamata
November 9, 2015 at 8:41 am
Boma ni boma
Mumbi Phiri Cisusu
November 9, 2015 at 9:19 am
In most cases cadres especially from the opposition behave the way they behave because of the unprofessional manner police handle issues. Take for example, cadres or indeed leaders from the ruling party will undertake a procession or hold meetings without police questioning them, but when it is the opposition, police will come with full force arresting everyone on the grounds that they didn’t get police permit to hold a meeting or conduct a procession. Is that professionalism? Even when police permit is sought, it is either it will be turned down or cancelled at last minute. Right now the president is campaigning even when it is not time for campaign and yet it is wrong for opposition to do the same.
kasantana
November 9, 2015 at 11:12 am
Para instills fear,ni tear gas ne nkonto.tabangasha
chimo.
November 9, 2015 at 11:43 am
Proffesionalism ya nyoko.
ka junta
November 9, 2015 at 11:54 am
wachimwa kale… nkala pansi, chosa nsapato iwe
Rooftop Zulu
November 9, 2015 at 12:32 pm
…tiye…uzakambila kusogolo.
New Educated Zambia©❤√
November 9, 2015 at 12:14 pm
The pf have made the police partisan and violent against opposition. Using the poa the pf has terrorised peoples freedom and rights in order to ensure a grip on power. Should pf be left to rule this country will be a failed state
Badboy 05
November 9, 2015 at 12:37 pm
Police mu Zambia ni chaya ku mutu first then ask questions later.
IF NOT
November 9, 2015 at 3:54 pm
Kamfisa Mobile Unit ni no nonsense……..
Incognito
November 9, 2015 at 3:58 pm
Uzakamba kusogolo, anso ukamba na chizungu.
deja vu
November 9, 2015 at 4:20 pm
Not Educated Zambia it’s not pf which has spoiled ZP. The started to rot in the 1980s.
Kelvin
November 9, 2015 at 8:17 pm
Boma ni boma but a criminal z free or innocent until proven giulty
Hello Haters
November 9, 2015 at 9:07 pm
There is no way, as opposition we can allow our leader to go to the police station alone for interrogation, banga mupasa polonium, only until a new breed of politicians under the UPND come into the system will that come to fruition of letting politicians go to the police on their own. Yes 2016 UPND is power that will be a possibility.
Hello Haters
November 9, 2015 at 9:14 pm
And someone tell zelu palibe officers to stop carry heavy artillery in public we are not at war, why carrying a chi ak47 on the shoulder like we are in Somalia, a little hip pistol and a short batton can do, and a little pepper spray like the one someone was accused of using on unruly PFool cadres, it really comes in handy in such cases when dealing with thugs.
FED
November 9, 2015 at 10:46 pm
OTHER JOBS ARE A CALLING FROM GOD
bamwene
November 11, 2015 at 3:15 am
uzakambila kusogolo kwa nyoko….???
ba mwine
November 11, 2015 at 3:18 am
professionalizim is needed in Zambia police