TWO Metro Police officers were arrested in a sting operation for soliciting bribes on Thursday, 9 July.
The officers appeared at the Pinetown Magistrate’s Court on charges of corruption on Friday, 10 July.
According to the manager of a trailer company in Wiltshire Road in Northdene Industrial, David Muller, the officers tried to impound a forklift in Mariannhill’s Main Road on Thursday. The metro police stopped the driver and found that the Forklift was not licensed. It is believed the officers asked him for a bribe of R2 000 to make the situation ‘go away’. Muller reported the two officers to a senior Metro Police official, who in turn involved the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID), which carried out the sting operation.
“I told the Metro Police officer, you can only impound a vehicle if it’s unsafe, has faulty brakes, et cetera. He then said to me, ‘Well, then I’m going to impound it’. I said ‘No, you are not. If you want to try and impound the vehicle I’ll call someone senior in the Metro Police’. He then hounded on. This went on for about half an hour, continuously saying he was going to impound it. Eventually he said we can make this ‘go away’. Then I realised that this guy wanted money. So, I thought, ‘Yeah, OK. I’ll play along with you’,” said Muller.
After a brief appearance in court on Friday, one officer was released on R2 000 bail and the other on a warning, and the case was postponed to 31 July.
Muller said he posted a brief report of the incident on a social networking site and was surprised by the number of people who wrote back and said they experienced similar situations.
