Lockdown Diaries: If only cops would arrest criminals

It had all the hallmarks of the arrest of a hardcore criminal: the sound of sirens and overzealous police officers leaping out of a convoy of cars and vans at the entrance to a Kempton Park butchery. But it was to arrest an elderly woman selling vegetables.

Upon spotting the approaching police convoy, the woman ran into the butchery to mingle among shoppers to evade arrest, while the officers were busy confiscating her vegetables from her makeshift stand next to the pavement.

Police officers then went into the butchery, dragged the woman out, handcuffed her and locked her in the back of a police van.

Amid the unfolding drama, I reached for my cellphone to video the incident. Within a minute of getting ready to focus and pressing the video button, a police officer rushed at me, demanding I hand him my cellphone, which I refused to do.

“Give me the phone now. Are you a journalist? Colleagues, we have a journalist here,” he shouted.

Like a hunting pack of wolves seeing a victim in the bush, I was soon surrounded by police officers asking that I identify myself. My biggest concern was that my attempted videoing of the incident had been disturbed. Upon producing my press card, one officer requested the state of disaster permit allowing essential workers like journalists to do their jobs without hindrance.

“I know all the journalists here, but I do not know you. Did you come here to buy or to carry out your work as a journalist?

“You cannot be here as a shopper and a journalist at the same time,” remarked the police officer.

I responded: “I am here to buy meat, but I am now doing both because I am in middle of a breaking story. Wherever I am, I am at work because of the nature of the job.”

I was asked to hop into a police vehicle and driven in a convoy to my apartment, about two kilometres from the butchery, to fetch my permit. I was then accompanied to my apartment, where I showed them the permit.

Concerned neighbours, some peeping through windows, some watching from balconies, did not know what to make of the drama until they saw me being released and the convoy speeding off with the arrested street vendor.

The speed and zeal with which police arrested me and the street vendor made me think how we could be living in a crime-free South Africa, had the cops nabbed a hardcore criminal.

Brian Sokutu.

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