The events that transpired on Saturday played out like a Hollywood movie for 7de Laan director Henry Mylne. And he is still shaking off the emotional remnants of the day and his terrible run-in with several policemen from the Garsfontein police station.
“It was quite unexpected,” he explains. “I was on my way to Pretoria to attend a student production at Die Wilgers High School. I was waiting for my (actress) friend Shereen Swart in front of the school. While sitting in my car, a convoy of about three to four vehicles, plus an armoured police van, pulled up.
“About six to eight policemen stormed out and pulled me out of my car. They mocked and abused me and turned my car upside down, throwing my CDs on the floor.
“It was obvious they were having a whale of a time.”
He continues: “The leader of the pack said in a projected voice: ‘I am not finding anything on this guy, but I’m going to arrest him. Throw him in the van, I will find something on him when we get to the charge office.’
“I was pushed around by about 25 other guys; the door was banged shut on me with my shoe caught in it. Inside, the armoured vehicle was extremely hot and there was no air. It only had two small windows.
“We drove a short distance when they picked up two other guys, I presume in a similar way, and threw them on top of me.”
Still reeling from the shock of being unjustly detained in a vehicle that was driven at high speed in a journey that involved several abrupt stops which left all the detainees falling over each other and getting a bit banged up, the situation worsened for Mylne.
“I got the impression they were doing it for sport. And then they used pepper spray on us. I have a chronic upper respiratory tract infection which my pulmonologist is treating. I had my inhaler in my car, which was left abandoned. Because of the pepper spray, I went into a spasm and started losing oxygen,” he shares.
Luckily, he had his cellphone with him and managed to call his girlfriend, who knew the layout of Pretoria well.
“I pointed out certain beacons we were passing and she rode like a mad woman and eventually found the convoy of police vehicles and forced them to stop. She got out of the car and confronted them about my arrest. They used expletives and shouted that she was drunk and should shut up. And they refused to divulge their names. Her daughter took photographs of all the vehicle registration numbers, but they forced her to delete them.”
His girlfriend then followed the convoy to the police station.
“We were bundled into a holding cell and asked to remove our shoe laces – common practice for prisoners. The captain came and asked me to follow him to a separate room where he told me he was the captain of the Saturday night beat.
“I asked him for the reason for my arrest and he said it had been reported to him that I was alone in the car, hence my arrest because they thought I looked like somebody who could be using drugs.”
While he was urged to forget about the incident and was dissuaded from confronting any of the officers, Mylne made it clear he wasn’t prepared to do that. When he went to fetch his car, he says he was given more uphill.
“The captain took me to the upstart who led the arrest on me. This guy very cockily said to me they arrested me because I look like somebody who should be using drugs,” he says.
The police officer then produced a cap, which fitted on to his Energade bottle, and alleged it was used by Mylne to sniff cocaine.
Mylne says all attempts made to clarify the misunderstanding fell on deaf ears.
“The minute you start projecting your voice, they tell you to shut up and calm down,” he says.
On Sunday, Mylne got hold of Mike Bolhuis, a specialist investigator who looks into serious violent and economic crimes.
“He is handling the investigation now. Once he has all his ducks in a row, including statements from my friends and doctors, he will come back to me and I’m going to file a civil suit through one of his attorneys. I feel, in principle, I cannot let this go.”
Bolhuis gave an update on the situation: “We have had a fruitful discussion with Col. Govender and Col. Solomons yesterday. They have requested a second meeting with the complainant, Mr Henry Mylne, next Wednesday morning. They also want to present their side of the story and suggested an amicable resolution with a closed round-table meeting. They have said that, should we plan to proceed with the law suit afterwards, we can. And that they will also conduct an investigation themselves. Right now, they said they won’t react to the media concerning these allegations.”
In going public about his awful experience, Mylne also hopes to speak for others who have been in the same predicament.
“The other guys who were arrested haven’t got a voice. They just took it for granted that they should be treated like this. They are poor people. From what I could gather, only one or two were drunks. The others weren’t,” he defends.