Thread: Talking about the Namibian Police

Following an article in todays Namibian(Front page news per say), It transpires that the City Police committed a gross crime today by locking up street children as little as six yrs old. What is wrong with our society? in another case recently a 12 yr old was locked up, coz of food theft(hungry kid if u don mind), whatever happened to community service?This is a disaster, as it is a definate recipe for producing hardcore criminals instead looking for better ways to solve petty crimes, while defrauders of millions of tax payers money are free as birds. Anyway,the Mayor of the City of WHK stated that the issue is apparently enjoying priority while he awaits some report from relevant respondents(needless to say this does not solve the problem of the kids having to spent their weekend in jail). I believe that it seems to the city police to respect the so called legal contravention of the City's by laws, but entirely disregard the human rights of already adversely effected street children and commiting the gross human rights enfringement by locking up minors. I thought minors are incapacitated to sign for e.g. contracts, so is it no logical that such minors cannot be held responsible for apparently violating so called by laws? City police further blamed the ministry of social services for not assisting in finding a solution to the street child syndrome. they claim when they round up these kids for stealing food and other petty crimes comitted, they establish a 'criminal' record for these kids, hence the record warrants the arrests mentioned. I wonder in which court of law these records were confirmed? even so for someone who has a so called record, the police can only arrest where there are grounds for a crime committed and I trust simply being orphaned and consequently homeless can never render a person a criminal. Our society is so ready to assist flood victims, who at least comprise of some percentage of adults up north(innitiative from private sector), but can seemingly never solve the plight of the street kids. Your opinions please!!!

It is an outrage, Juikk - an absolute outrage and a sign how incompetent and impotent our authorities are when dealing with street children. I can understand that resources are limited, and that stret children generally are a challenge to deal with. But putting them in jail? What is that all about? Even street children have a right to be protected from adults, and the Polic has an obligation to PROTECT them, not CRIMINALISE them. I'mlooking forward to the results of the investigaiton, but mroe importantly: I'M LOOKING FORWARD TO SOMEONE ACTUALLY TAKING RESPONSIBILITY

Take the guys who did and lock in there as well!!! A taste of their own medicine!!!!!! A teaspoon of corruption makes the medicine go down!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was sitting at a stop light when a taxi decided to go through at high speed through a red light.
Behind him was a traffic police car and i thought to myself finally they are going to nail the typically bad taxi driver.

nope .. he did not stop the taxi driver.
I have seen so many offences occur right in front of the police and they do nothing about it.

In other countries the police do not hesitate to stop vehicles who break the law, they consider it a matter of public safety to issue a ticket to an offender so that they educate the driver to be more responsible.
It's also good revenue for the government and the police department.

Where does the money go when the police issue a ticket? perhaps if the police had a greater share they would be more inclined to pull over that bad taxi driver because the fines would pay for his much needed Pay increase.

Pedestrians should also be fined .. they are not taking charge of their own safety ... you all know what i mean , 5 people in the middle of the road standing on the yellow line un-afraid or pedestrians hailing a taxi forcing the taxi driver to stop traffic in a unsafe manner.
Traffic police need to show that bad drivers no longer own the road

Give the police a fair wage

Actually agree with you! Our police does not seem to see many things ... especially those that might actually need some effort and work!

I also completely agree with you Omer and Mie1. The solution to this kind of unprofessional behaviour on the part on the police officers seems to me to have to be of a multi-prongued apporach. On the one hand better pay and conditions of work should lead to better motivated police officers. Then of course there is training, and more training. And then the public needs to be able to report police officers who obviously don't care much about their work, their image, public safety and the consequences of their actions. I know that some commanders in the Namibian Police don't accept this kind of behaviour, and maybe things need to be jacked up a bit? The other unfortunate thing is that many public servants, and this includes police officers, don't regard themselves as being in the service of the public, and accountable to thepublic. Many, and don't say all here, don't particularly care about either the public or the service, which is a clear indication of a lack of profesisonalism. But here I'm not saying anything new.

Originally Posted by Omer

Give the police a fair wage

Indeed, yes. But equally let us make it clear that this kind of work ethic is not going to advance our nation. I am curious, Omer. Did this occur in Windhoek or another town. The Windhoek traffic police has a good reputation and they have pulled me over on occasion, although I did respect the traffic signals.

It happened near Eros at the Engen stop light.
In town police could charge a driver every light change if they wanted to.
Of course to pull the driver over would be complete gridlock and it would cause chaos and probably some accidents so the only way to nail these extreme offender would by photo fines through the mail.
I have never been pulled over and i am no saint when it comes to the yellow light but i got tired of the aggitated drivers honking behind me.
You learn quick here the Real rules of the road but some drivers just go a bit too far.
The police seem to concentrate on nailing illegal taxis and not enough on bad drivers.
I'm not knocking the police at all because i realize they would get a lot of grief for disrupting traffic in town escpecially near Verhill Mall where a lot of the offenses occur.

as far as i know only traffic police can ticket bad driver?
I know police bakies will not pull over bad drivers , people seem to know they have no worry with the white bakies.

Slow down Comrade! From a traffic incident to the police force as such is quite a jump....who knows what happened in this indicent. but I do think that the city council should start looking at deploying camera technology at intersections where jumping lights si a problem, and issue tickets using this technology. It's being done in most major European cities to great effect.