07 Jul 2016

Botswana Police Service would like to respond to an opinionated article by one, Richard Moleofe published by Mmegi newspaper on Friday July 01, 2016 on page 23 .

Whilst it is not in our nature to respond to every article especially opinions about police operations, we strongly feel that failure to react to such damaging insinuations will mislead the general public.

Mr Moleofe who claims to have the know-how on conducting a road block and in the process condemning how we as the police have been doing it said “when I was an officer cadet, my platoon commander taught us the drills of conducting a roadblock. Before anyone from the law enforcement agencies can set up a roadblock, they need to apply to a local magistrate to be given such authority.

A roadblock by law is an equivalence of a search warrant and hence the need to get a magistrate’s permission.”

The above assertions by Mr Moleofe show his lack of understanding of the laws of Botswana and statutory powers of the Police in the enforcement of such Laws.

In this regard, we would like to inform Mr Moleofe that as the Police we don’t have to apply to a local magistrate to be given authority or permission to carry out an operation on any road in the country as he claims.

We would like to state that the presence of the police on the roads is to ensure road safety, prevention and detection of crime and duly enforce all written laws and generally maintain the peace. A good percentage of our population appreciates our contribution in major activities such as the Desert Race. Without necessarily blowing our own trumpet, we would like to state that without our presence at such events it would be chaotic and inconveniencing on the contrary.

Through our road checks at this year’s Desert Race we were able to detect 723 road traffic cases of which 83 of them were for drunken driving while 59 were for driving without a driver’s licence.

We are not going to shy away from discharging our statutory obligation of ensuring that our communities are kept safe and secure and we are going to continue to increase our visibility on the roads to arrest the road carnage that keeps on claiming many lives. Ends