“WE DON’T WANT POLICE WHO ARE TRAINED TO KILL”

The spokesperson of the General Command of the Mozambican Police, Pedro Cossa, declared on Tuesday that the police force “doesn’t want agents who are trained to kill”.That, he told reporters, was why the police involved in two recent scandals will be expelled from the force. In the most serious case, police officers in the T3 neighbourhood of the southern city of Matola shot and killed a 31 year old minibus driver, Alfredo Tivane, on 19 March simply because he disobeyed an order to stop – a friend of Tivane said that he continued driving his vehicle because he did not hear the police command to stop.In a second case, a crew from the independent television station, STV, caught on camera scenes of police beating up a young man in the western city of Tete, who was unable to show his identity card – even though it is not a crime to walk the streets without an ID card, and large numbers of Mozambicans do not possess such a card. When the journalists approached the police, they too were threatened and manhandled. These scenes were broadcast to the nation on the STV evening news.Cossa said that the policemen involved in the T3 murder and the Tete beating have been detained, and will stay in jail until all the legal procedures have been complied with. “This type of attitude is repugnant both to the police force and to society”, he said.He said the policemen who committed these brutal acts were rookies, and the norm is that such trainee police should be accompanied by an experienced officer. “I don’t know what happened with these rookies. They acted without the consent of their superior”, Cossa added. He urged local communities to help in the recruitment of young people for the police, by revealing what they know of their real behaviour. “Often the communities don’t help”, he said. “They allow young people of doubtful conduct to enter the police. We frequently send our agents into the neighbourhoods, but when we ask about the conduct of youths who want to join the police, the communities don’t give us the true facts”.