Update, 26 May, 1pm
Spokesperson for Metro police, Wayne Minnaar alleged that the couple sped off when they were being approached by the officers on foot after stopping their vehicle behind the couple. He said a chase ensued and the couple was cornered as they tried to off-ramp the highway.
Minnaar said he was not sure of the direction the couple was driving in and was unable to give the exact name of the off-ramp.
He said the man, the driver of the car, was then arrested and put in the back of the van while another officer drove the car as both of them were allegedly too drunk to be allowed behind the wheel.
It is claimed the officers drove the couple to the Marlboro pound where cars confiscated from drunken drivers are kept, and parked the vehicle in the hope that they would arrange for someone to drive the woman to her home. When they returned to pick her up and take her home, she was nowhere to be found.
At Sandringham Police Station, the man is said to have refused to allow blood to be drawn. He was then handcuffed so that a sample could be drawn, and a charge of drunken driving was then opened.
When contacted for comment on the Metro police version of events of the fateful night, the woman denied the couple ever fled the scene and were caught at the next off-ramp of the N1 from William Nicol towards the south.
“We did not speed off, we did not run away from the Metro police and they did not arrest us on the said off-ramp,” she said.
“This is getting ridiculous and I will not comment any further as the case is now in the hands of my lawyers,” she added.
Original story, 22 May, 2.30pm
A Randpark Ridge woman and her boyfriend allegedly endured a horrendous ordeal with Metro police in the late hours of 20 May.
The couple, who preferred to remain anonymous, had just left a charity event at Parkers Comedy in Montecasino at about 12.30am and soon after joining William Nicol Drive on their way to join the highway home, they were apparently pulled over by Metro police officers.
A male and female officer walked over to their BMW cabriolet, and the male officer went straight to the driver’s window while the female officer stood at the passenger window where the woman was sitting. The male officer demanded a driver’s licence from the man and ordered him to get out of the car.
“We then demanded to see their Metro police licences as we were not sure they were genuine officers,” said the woman. “They became aggressive and abusive, with the female officer threatening to breathalyse me.”
She told the woman officer that she did not understand why she wanted to breathalyse her as she was not driving the vehicle. “I then insisted they produce their licences as I explained a previous encounter with bogus members of the police.
“The male officer got physical and pulled my boyfriend out of the car, locked him in the back of their van and jumped into our BMW and drove off with me, and other officers followed with my boyfriend in the back of the van.
“I kept asking where we were going, but instead one of them put her hands over my face so I would not see the direction we were heading in. “We ended up in a fenced-off bushy place with an old building where they ordered me to jump out of the car, locked it and took the keys and left me beside the vehicle and drove off with my boyfriend,” she said.
While she was trying to figure out where she was, they pulled up again with her boyfriend in the van and parked a distance away from the couple’s car. “I could hear my boyfriend screaming, wanting to know if I was okay and he said they were taking him to the cop shop.
“I then demanded that they take me with rather than leave me in the middle of nowhere and they said they will come back for me.”
Strangers soon appeared on the other side of a fence where the woman was stranded. “I was so terrified by now and I sent out a group message to Steelwings West Rand Motor Cycle Club asking them to please help me, I need urgent help.” One of the group members phoned and asked the woman where she was, and as she did not know, he asked her to send a location over her phone to the group. The member then sent a message back saying he had found the location.
“I was next to the Marlboro Testing Grounds next to Alexandra and he would come for me in five minutes. This freaked me out even further as I started to panic about my safety and these men who kept coming up to the fence.”
“The group member collected me. This was now about 2.30am,” she said.
The woman said she asked the group member to drive her to her home so she could fetch the spare keys for the car. As they drove away from the location, a police van drove passed but never stopped as they attempted to flag them down. When the woman and group member got back to retrieve her vehicle, it was not there.
They then drove to Bramley, Douglasdale and Sandton police stations where they were joined by another group member in their bid to locate her boyfriend. She also contacted Cartrack to help locate her vehicle, but they couldn’t, and said it was most probably parked in a basement where there was no network coverage.
At about 6am while still at the Sandton police, her phone rang and it was her boyfriend saying he was locked up at Sandringham Police Station. “When we got to Sandringham, they released him but took him back into the cells when we demanded to be given the names of the arresting officers, saying we were becoming difficult.”
The boyfriend was eventually released 30 minutes later and they learnt that the Metro police allegedly had gone back to collect the car, threw the keys at her boyfriend in the cell and said, “Good luck in finding your girlfriend.”
The woman and her boyfriend have a case of kidnapping against Metro police. The couple expressed their gratitude to the group members who helped.
Whether or not the suspects are legitimate police officers is yet to be determined, but Metro police spokesperson Wayne Minnaar said a case had been opened with Metro police internal investigations.
Have you been a victim of Metro police abuses before? Comment below, and let us know.
