“So an officer in a police vehicle stopped my husband last Saturday. He is ordered to get out, but when he wants to take his cell phone to put in his pocket, he is told to leave it where it is.

They threw out a bag with keys that were in the car and when they drove, my husband put the keys back and found that his cellphone was gone. The owner of the guesthouse where they stopped him comes to ask what he is looking for.

She goes to look with him on her CCTV cameras and sees the policeman pushing the cellphone in his sleeve and fiddling with the change in the car. She tells my husband she knows which way when the police were driving and rides with him to look for them.

They then got his bank card and SIM card not far from the guest house in the road, tracked down the police vehicle and got his cellphone back, after the policeman first wanted to argue.

The police station refuses to make a case because they say my husband should not have left his cellphone lying around, even though there was a witness of the theft. The phone is already wiped and it will cost us money to pick up the pin that the idiot put on.

The owner of the guest house says that is why the community takes matters into its own hands and does not try to get the police involved, because the police are of no help.”