By Patson Chilemba
Copperbelt Police Commissioner Peacewell Mweemba has threatened to deal with his officers sternly over assertions that they made people they arrested pay K56 each without providing them with receipts.
Speaking with Daily Revelation on information that police officers over the Christmas weekend rounded up and beat up the over 30 patrons at a night club in Chingola and put them in police cells, after which they made each one of them pay K56 without providing receipts, Mweemba said he has [pp-logged-users] not received the report about the same arrests, but indicated that the fact he did not receive the report was because something irregular could have been committed by his officers.
Asked if he thought he could not have received the report because already it appears irregular that people paid money for which they were no provided not receipts by his officers in Chingola, Mweemba said: “That can only be true because whenever we get money from people as admission of guilty they have to give them a receipt. Yes! That is a must. So to say that they did not give them receipts is quite very unfortunate because that is not the normal procedure. Yes!”
Put to him that police were the custodians of enforcing the law against criminality but now they were being accused of engaging in the same things they must be able to prosecute, and ask if this was one matter the police command would look seriously into, Mweemba said: “Usually as I have said earlier on, it’s not normal for an officer to get money from someone without a receipt. Now if that is happening then we are going to deal with such officers. Yes! We are going to deal with them firmly because there is no way you can get money from someone then say that is admission of guilty, no! That is not allowed, so they have to get receipts and give receipts to the person who pays money. Yes!”
Owner of the club, Pa Loketo, from where the revelers were arrested from, James Suwilanji Sinyingwa, narrated to Daily Revelation Newspaper that he, along with his workers were among those arrested by the police and taken to Nchanga police.
One of the revelers who spoke with Daily Revelation on condition of anonymity because of where he works said they just saw two land cruisers approaching the club, and then police officers came out and started rounding everybody up.
He said police were uncompromising when they tried asking them questions, saying he was handcuffed to three people, including his wife, who he said was roughed up and thrown into the vehicle after which she was handcuffed to him.
“We were paying K56 and I think we were over 80 in all (plus the others who had been rounded up elsewhere). So two guys were detained saying, these two we won’t allow them to go because they were making noise when we were arresting them,” said the reveler. “After we made the calls that’s when they too were made to pay K56 but they were given receipts which they said they did not have.” [/pp-logged-users]
