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Sustain your vigilance, the Police Force
2006-12-24 09:34:54
By Rayner Ngonji
Outlawing superstition is a justifiable social and legal means of pressing home the point that the phenomenon is primitive and anti-development.
But it is a glaring fact that superstition is very much a part, and actively so, of our society. Denying its existence would be tantamount to burying our heads into the sand like the ostrich.
A curious dimension to superstition is that its subscribers include some individuals who aspire to become legislators and are thus both administratively and morally enjoined to condemn the unlawful trend.
In the world of crime, superstition is a trend that has gained increasing currency in recent times, and which our law enforcers have had to cope with, as a pretty tricky challenge.
Armed bandits enlist the presumed expertise of witchdoctors to conduct anti-arrest rituals for them, and to programme their weapons as effective tools for executing robberies successfully.
The rituals turn out to be an anti-climax and laughable, because quite often, robbers get caught in the act or are arrested after police manhunts and the weapons used seized.
More laughable are cases of robbers and witchdoctors being caught in the heat of pre-robbery sessions in the ’’clinics’’ of the characters who claim to possess the power to immunize the criminals against arrest.
Given that superstitious beliefs virtually approximate or perhaps rival religious beliefs, the police should mount a crackdown against the dimension.
For characters that are otherwise cowardly may take to crime as a career, believing that the ’’fortification’’ of witchdoctors would smoothen their criminal operations.
The ’’inside job’’ dimension is also one that our law enforcers should scratch their heads hard over. For increasingly, the manner and timing of robberies, on aspects such as what time and along which route huge amounts are transferred; or where money is kept within business premises, points to leakage of information from criminally-minded insiders who are lured by a handsome cut of the loot.
More frightening is behaviour bordering on false martyrdom, that individuals can and are pursuing, to keep several kilometers away from suspicion of complicity.
In last week-end’s 48m/- robbery incident in Dar es Salaam, for instance, police smelt a rat over the driver of a vehicle in which the money was being carried, who was superficially injured during the ensuing shoot-out. He was arrested after treatment for questioning.
This is a pointer that someone may volunteer to have his leg blown off and become crippled, to steer clear of suspicion, in exchange of a few million shillings !
We have trust in our Police Force , which, as it becomes more modernized and scientific, is seeing through such trickery.
On the whole, however, it is doing a good job. It should keep it up.
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