A Botswana Police Service source says that given long-standing protocols to secure police stations across the country, robbers should never have been able to rob the Goodhope Police Station. The unusual incident happened last Tuesday when a group of axe-wielding men pounced on the station in the dead of night and, according to a source, found two female Special Constables that they easily subdued. The level of vigilance at police stations is generally low, in part because it is the last place robbers would target. The terrified Special Constables were reportedly tied and locked up in the radio room as the robbers made for the armoury.
There they stole 14 AK 47 service rifles, five service pistols and an undisclosed amount of ammunition. The description of this incident has raised vexing questions even for police veterans. One says that a police station should never be under effective control and management of Special Constables, who are actually supposed to assist trained police. “What has been revealed shows that contrary to established protocol, the Special Constables had effective control and management of the police station,” he adds.
The other point that he makes is that at least four officers should be in the station, the most senior being a Sub-Inspector serving as section leader and a Sergeant as his deputy. He adds that other officers periodically going out on patrol are not supposed to venture too far from the station. How the robbers managed to steal the rifles from the armoury is perhaps the most vexing question. Our information is that the armoury is always under lock and key and on account of being secured with a vault door, is supposed to be impregnable. “We still don’t know whether the robbers used a key or not but there is no way that they would have been able to break into the armoury,” says the veteran source, adding that access to the armoury is restricted to only two officers: the Station Commander and his/her deputy. In agreeing with the latter assessment, another source says that a set of special tools would have been required to breach the armoury – something that appears unlikely for robbers who used vary basic weapons when they attacked the station.
A related issue is that in addition to the secured rifles in the armoury, one should always be within easy reach of officers on duty. That rifle would have been within easy reach of the Special Constables who were on duty when the robbers struck. However, this class of police officers is not trained in weapons-handling and so would have been unable to use that rifle to defend the police station. While the Police Act says that every special constable has the same powers, privileges and protection and shall perform the same duties, the reality is that where weapons are concerned, Special Constables play a minimal, if any, role. What another BPS officer – this one the most senior of our sources – says shows that there is no uniformity in the way police stations are run across the country.
This officer says that deployment varies across police stations and policing districts. In elaboration of this point, he points out, by way of example, that while a Sub-Inspector would be the section leader at a Gaborone station, such responsibility would fall to a Sergeant in a station at a rural area – like Goodhope.
“Even a Constable can be a section leader,” he adds.
Indeed that is confirmed by another officer who says that for the most part, how officers are deployed – be it at the police station itself or out in the field – largely depends on available manpower. There may be an explanation for why only two female officers were at the police station when the robbers struck. One piece of information that has drilled out is that the robbers lured some officers away from the station by calling beforehand to report a law enforcement emergency that required urgent attention far away from the station.
Ordinarily, such emergencies are attended by male officers and so as those officers scrambled into their patrol cars to respond to the emergency, the robbers (who could well have been calling from the parking lot of the police station itself) saw opportunity to strike. Apparently the latter is a trick that some criminals have been known to use on the police. A police officer recalls an incident in Nata when someone called the police station at night to report that the private car that he was travelling in, had had a breakdown a good distance away from Nata. The officer who took the call explained that the police don’t attend such emergencies and so couldn’t be of help.
The same person called back a couple of minutes later to essentially report himself to the police – that he and his accomplices had just robbed a Chinese businessman in the village. He gave the address of the crime scene and upon arrival there, police officers found the businessman, his hands and feet bound as the caller-robber had said. The Goodhope robbery happens at a time that, going back to last year, armed robberies – especially of cash-in-transit security trucks – have become an almost daily occurrence.
This has led some to suggest that these robberies could be part of a larger political destabilisation campaign. The targets are mostly cash sales from marquee-name supermarkets – especially Choppies. It is possible that the weapons that were stolen in Goodhope may have already been used in a robbery. In response to the unprecedented robberies, the Ministry of Defence and Security beefed up security by providing armed escorts from some arms of force, notably BPS, Botswana Defence Force and the Directorate of Intelligence Services and Security (DISS). However, in some (admittedly rare) cases, the robberies have been as daring as to engage in firefight with law enforcement officers. So far, that has not worked out too well for the robbers but they don’t seem discouraged.
Within BPS and indeed among members of the public, magistrate courts are not seen to be helping the situation because they have been mostly giving bail to armed-robbery suspects, some of whom re-offend. Appearing before a parliamentary committee two months ago, DISS’ Director-General, Peter Magosi, said that police officers, especially junior ones, are “frustrated” about robbers routinely getting bail when they risk their lives to apprehend them.
