Cocaine dealer jailed nine months

Yeukai Karengezeka Court Correspondent

A DRUG dealerwho was found with 10,6 grammes of cocaine and pretended to be a police officer to evade arrest has been sentenced to an effective nine months in prison for the drugs and fined US$200 for impersonation and resisting arrest.

Stephen Muzengeza (37) was convicted of three counts of unlawful possession of dangerous drugs, impersonation of a police officer and resisting arrest by Harare magistrate Mrs Ruth Moyo.

For drugs possession, he was sentenced to nine months in jail. For the other two charges he was fined US$100 (or three months) for each charge.

The State led by Ms Mandirasa Chigumira proved that on March 17 at around 2pm, CID Drugs and Narcotics received information that Muzengeza was moving around in greater Harare supplying cocaine using different vehicles.

The next day at around 2:22pm, the detectives lured Muzengeza to corner Sam Nujoma Street and Leonid Brezhnev Avenue in the Harare Avenues, purporting to be potential buyers.

He arrived driving a Mazda CX vehicle without registration numbers, disembarked and approached the detectives who were seated in their vehicle.

The detectives then introduced themselves and requested to search him for dangerous drugs, but Muzengeza identified himself to the detectives as a fellow police officer stationed at CID Homicide Harare and declared that he could not be searched since he was a police officer.

The detectives insisted that they still needed to search him and arrested him after a protracted scuffle.

Upon arrest, he failed to produce his Zimbabwe Republic Police identity card and further checks also proved that he was not a police officer.