Pretoria - One of the two Tshwane Metro Police officers arrested for the alleged armed robbery of a motorist and threatening to shoot her three-year-old daughter on the Mabopane highway on Monday has been released.
The Specialised Commercial Crime Court on Monday dropped the charges against Gilbert Mashamaite, 39, citing insufficient evidence.
But his younger colleague and co-accused, 35-year-old Sipho Machubeni, will return to the court on Thursday afternoon for a bail application.
The application could not go ahead on Wednesday as the investigating officer in the matter was a witness in another court in an unrelated case.
Machubeni cut a lone and sombre figure in the dock as the magistrate declared his colleague a free man.
The postponement also favoured Machubeni’s legal representative, who told the court he needed more time to prepare his client’s evidence by way of an affidavit.
When he returns to court on Thursday, he will face charges of robbery with aggravating circumstances and corruption.
The officers made their way past awaiting photographers and were driven out of the court building in a marked Pretoria Central police station van.
Their lawyer covered his face with a diary as he emerged from the building.
The charges against Machubeni emanate from an incident near the Zandfontein Cemetery, where he is alleged to have demanded a bribe from Magda Robbertse, forcefully took money from her car’s ashtray, and warned her crying daughter Veronique he would shoot her if she did not keep quiet.
The officers also face internal disciplinary processes, acting spokeswoman of the Tshwane Metro Police Department, Kuki Tshabalala, said.
When the officers stopped Robbertse, she was apparently driving without fastening her safety belt.
She was on her way home to Kirkney after fetching her daughter and the child’s two-year-old brother Ricardo from school.
Robbertse had no driving licence.
According to the charge sheet, the money taken from the car amounted to R80.90.
The matter was reported to Hercules police station, and after an intensive investigation, Mashamaite and Machubeni were arrested on Monday evening.
Their arrests brought to nine the number of officers from the municipal by-law enforcement unit arrested for misconduct this month.
In terms of the national Road Traffic Act, a motorist stopped by metro police officers has a right to be treated professionally and in a dignified and respectful manner and be free from all forms of violence.
National chairman of Justice Project SA, Howard Dembovsky, said urgent interventions were required to clamp down on rotten metro police officers.
“We are very concerned. We need decisive action by municipalities and law enforcement agencies,” he said.
Crime Line head Yusuf Abramjee complimented police for the swift action and said the rotten officers should be jailed.
A victim of bribery-seeking officers himself, Abramjee appealed to the public to blow the whistle on crooked cops.
He blew the whistle on two Tshwane metro officers who allegedly demanded a bribe after snapping him driving over the speed limit in Centurion.
Another officer was arrested for a similar offence in Hammanskraal, while four more were nabbed for an alleged business robbery in Soshanguve.
DA spokeswoman for community safety in the metro council, Karen Meyer, said the problem of rotten police officers started with the training and evaluation process.
Meyer said the DA requested during a March 2010 council meeting that the selection and evaluation process for metro police be investigated and re-evaluated to stop the appointment of officers who were a law unto themselves.
“However, the ANC used its majority to vote against the motion, and in the five years since then, nothing has been done to change the outcome of the process,” she said.
“This incident is exactly what happens when you appoint quantity over quality.”
Meyer said the second way to stop the rot would be by setting proper examples by naming and shaming the officials and disclose the outcome of the investigation into their cases.
Misconduct by Tshwane Metro Police officers can be reported on the anti-corruption hotline 082 891 8625.
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Pretoria News