DESPICABLE BEHAVIOUR OF THE ZAMBIAN POLICE

I received this account from a friend who has gone back to Zambia after his studies abroad. He was recently caught up in a serious misunderstanding with the police over a real estate deal that went sour but he was nowhere near being connected to it but was simply a case of mistaken identity. It is unbelievable, in this day and age, that Zambian Police could be have like this

Something very strange happened to me in Lusaka last month:

I'm responsible for a family residential unit which has been under renovations and expected to be rented out. My church reverend [acting as an agent] recieved an anonymous call from some "prospective tenant"; whom we agreed to meet at noon that day. At the rendezvous point, five men and a white lady turned up; physically dragged us [my reverend and I] to their vehicle and seriously assaulted us when we tried to run away -- they even threatened to shoot us with two pistols if we resisted. As this white lady drove; from Chilenje - Interland - State House - Kabulonga - Mass Media - Arcades Mall - Ngombe Police; we demanded an explanation of what was happening. They turned out to be cops and accused my Reverend [BG] swindling the white lady out of millions of Kwachas. After some back and forth, they released us with the officer in charge stating as follows: "It's unfortunate that we got the wrong man, we instead are looking for a Mr AG. You may not have noticed but one of those people you found at our offices identified you as negative. Please understand that it is necessary form time to time for us to be aggressive because we have no clue over the kind of people we're dealing with. Furthermore, your identity was forwarded to us by a private investigator so it's not exactly our fault."

I couldn't believe my ears and was shocked at the level of incompetence. More so, when we tried to use standard procedure to lodge a complaint [and an assault charge] against the officers involved, we were told that such events were "very usual" and " very common" in their line of work. Clearly, nothing would come out of our effort to bring these fellows to retribution -- therefore,our only option is to take them to high court in their individual capacities and hope something can be done about this. I believe that such men do not deserve the badge of our beloved police force.