Blog South Africa

Video has been released of a South African police-raid carried out against the hapless patrons at the 24-hour Catz Pyjamas Bistro in Mellville.

Heavily-armed cops storming in, yelling loudly, kicking patrons off their chairs and onto the floors. Unresisting patrons were getting kicked and beaten by police.

Patrons then were forced downstairs, where 12 men and 1 woman were dumped into 2 police vehicles. The 13 people were only released from Brixton police station at 15:00 on Saturday.

Apparently they are being charged with ‘resisting arrest’.

The new video shows that these people did NOT resist arrest and show that police were the ones being violent and violating the patrons rights.

An article from the Rapport Newspaper says:

“On the video one can see one patron leaving the toilet and coming back into the restaurant – and one cop immediately grabs him by the arm and beats him in the face. The assaulted man falls to the floor – and a third cop then joins in and kicks the man repeatedly in the stomach, ribs and face.
When the three cops finally are done assaulting him, he tries to sit down on a chair – but another cop then pulls him over, chair and all.

By 15:00 Saturday-afternoon, relatives were still waiting outside the police station, anxiously waiting for the arrested restaurant-patrons’ release. One woman waiting outside was Mrs Carmen Benjamin of Pretoria – she was arrested but not charged. Her husband Clint was charged with resisting arrest. “I was in one police-vehicle with my husband and other men. Nobody resisted when we were loaded into the vehicle. Everybody was too scared and shocked to do anything.’

….

SAPF warrant-officer Lorraine van Emmerik was asked to comment. She confirmed that ‘the police raided the restaurant because they were still open after 2am which is against the law. The police tried to close the place down but people interfered in their duties there.’ She couldn’t comment on the video because she hadn’t seen it, she added.

– Rapport

I am not an advocate of people suing as a general rule, but I do hope that these victims sue the police and win! It is about time people took a stand against these thugs and to hold them accountable for their actions.

Tags: Crime by James
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There has still been absolutely no word by the police on the Anika Smit murder case. One has to wonder if any progress has been made?

What does this silence mean?

Well it could be that the police are still waiting for the crime labs to process all the evidence. It is well known that these labs are notoriously slow in getting results, generally because they are so overworked and understaffed.

Another conclusion could be that the police are absolutely clueless about the identity of the killer. This doesn’t surprise me, as it seems as though the police only get speedy results if the killer hangs around waiting to get picked up (a la the E.T. killers).

What worries me is that the longer we go without answers, the greater chance there is that the police will just try to pin this on a suspect without much evidence to back it up.

It seems that the media is also strangely silent about this. Despite the later E.T. murder, one would think that they would at least mention this case in passing!

Tags: Anika Smit Murder by James
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