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Avondale police station has seen its second mass transfer of traffic officers and the underlying problems, and the solution found by the police, both raise several concerns. Avondale traffic operates along a swathe of the inner ring of northern suburbs, with its territory stretching as far east as the central section of Borrowdale Road and including the University of Zimbabwe, so a majority of the rich, well-educated and important residents of Harare pass through this territory each day.
Such people are not afraid to complain, and often they know very senior police officers socially. While details are sketchy it is obvious that police headquarters must, to take such wholesale action, have had a large number of complaints from people who are articulate and whose word cannot be doubted.
Similar behaviour by police from another station, say one in the western or southern suburbs of Harare, might not have produced the same volume of complaints, or complaints sufficiently detailed that those who command the force could take action without being unjust to some police officers. In other words, Avondale might not be worse than any other police area, it simply being more likely that bad behaviour by police in that area will result in detailed complaints.
The second point of concern is that the police command has had to take moderate wholesale action. Rather than dismiss, or even have charged in court, officers proven to be guilty of corruption, the command has simply split up and transferred an entire section.
Since the police have been very willing to take stringent disciplinary action against officers who breach regulations, and have even arrested and taken to court police officers caught taking bribes, it is clear that the evidence of malpractice from Avondale was not complete enough for either action. It looks like there is a list of detailed complaints but the actual corrupt officers cannot be identified.
Here there could be injustice, the innocent suffering with the guilty, although even innocent officers are in breach of regulations by not reporting colleagues who are guilty, and so the mass transfer might now encourage those who are not corrupt to be more willing to report corruption, so they are not tainted with the same brush.
Here it would have been better if those making complaints could have been more specific so that sterner action could be taken against those who are guilty. Of course in these situations the police have to be careful that someone who is guilty of a traffic offence, and has been properly fined, is not just trying to “get even” with the police officer who caught him by embellishing a tale or even lying. We appreciate the quandary that the senior command faces in this sort of situation.
Finally, we must always remember that it takes two to commit an act of corruption. A bribe requires a payer and a taker. The wealthy, well-educated and powerful drivers moving through the Avondale police area are ideally placed to take a lead in ending corruption. They cannot be taken in by empty threats, so for them a bribe is simply a convenience rather than extortion, a way of minimising the delay after being caught. Sometimes the bribe is almost accidental, a driver asking if he has to wait for the ticket or can he just pay the fine and go. The drivers should wait, and the police should make them wait.
If drivers were willing to insist on getting the ticket and paying the legal fine, even though that process takes five minutes, they would minimise corruption. They would also accumulate evidence of harassment.
Those who regularly travel through the Avondale police area, and have fallen foul of the traffic section there report that police were exceptionally heavy handed. There are the things that everyone knows they should not do: speeding, treating a stop sign or red light as a give-way sign, and refusing to display licence discs.
Everyone knows that you are fined if caught doing this sort of thing.
But Avondale traffic went further than most stations in fining people for debatable offences, such as whether a person turning right did or did not cut the extreme edge of a corner by around 5cm, the sort of things that are difficult to prove or disprove.
A fanatical determination to enforce seat belt wearing, and even questioning people without a municipal water supply for a week why their cars were dirty, did not help inspire respect. But paying these US$5 fines for trivial offences, and then complaining, might warn police commanders that there is something odd happening.
We believe that the police are genuine in their determination to end corruption.
But we think the next steps must involve the public refusing to offer bribes and being willing to complain about possible harassment as well as corruption.
Online Reporter