Beers, brawls as drag-racing cops terrorise dorp
Antics in Boland town shock former US trooper
NOT even a career as a US state trooper could prepare Graham Hunter for the aggressive behaviour on South African roads.
He was allegedly head-butted and assaulted by off-duty police in a road rage incident at Tulbagh, 125km from Cape Town.
It started with a drag race in the serene town’s streets last Thursday. Things turned ugly after Hunter, who runs a guesthouse there, reached through the window of a blue BMW at a stop street and confiscated the car keys because the driver appeared to be drunk.
Police had already been alerted by a motorist who had nearly collided with the speeding vehicles, weaving through oncoming traffic outside a school.
“The driver began to speak, and almost immediately I could detect a strong odour of an unknown alcoholic beverage on or about his person,” said Hunter in a statement to police. “His speech as he spoke Afrikaans was slurred . . . He struggled to get out the vehicle.”
The altercation got heated. “At one point, the driver of the BMW, also a police officer, grabs my head with his hands and head-butts me in the face . . . He keeps asking me who the f*** I think I am.”
What happened next left Hunter — who is familiar with tough law enforcement techniques used in the US — flabbergasted. It has opened a can of worms about the conduct of a handful of police in a town where just three vehicles were reported stolen last year.
The wine-producing town is home to around 10 000 residents and became famous after being devastated by a massive earthquake in 1969.
Hunter’s version of events is backed up by eyewitness accounts and photographs of the drag racers with beers and the vehicles at a picnic shortly before the alleged assault.
With fists flying over the car keys:
Uniformed police arrived on scene but allegedly allowed the assault to continue.
They let the racing vehicles leave, refusing to take the drivers 30km to Ceres to have blood drawn to be tested for alcohol.
A motorist who lodged a complaint of reckless and drunk driving was forbidden to say in her statement that police refused to have blood drawn from the drivers.
Tulbagh station commander Major Charlie Meiring al- legedly “warned” Hunter after reading his statement not to “discredit” his men.
Four days after the brawl, the officers were back on duty, manning a roadblock. Initially it seemed the complaint was going nowhere. But police took statements from the officers after media inquiries and complaints to Western Cape police commissioner Lieutenant-General Arno Lamoer, six days after the incident.
The Independent Police Investigative Directorate said the complaint against the off-duty officers fell outside its mandate and referred the matter back to SAPS.
Provincial police spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Andrè Traut said on Friday that four SAPS members at Tulbagh faced criminal and disciplinary investigation. The Sunday Times knows their identities, but they are not permitted to speak to the media to present their version of events. Their statements indicate that Hunter had instigated the brawl.
One of the officers has a Jameson whiskey bottle as his Facebook profile and dared friends to “Catch me if you can” along with photographs of his BMW on Instagram.
“The criminal charges relate to driving a vehicle under the influence of alcohol, reckless and or negligent driving and [common] assault, and the departmental charges are in terms of the SAPS disciplinary regulations,” said Traut.
The motorist who almost crashed into the drag racers and asked for their blood to be drawn has also given police a statement.
She asked not to be identified by the Sunday Times, fearing for her safety in Tulbagh. “Meiring simply refused, saying he had 30 years’ experience within the police force and he was confident that blood tests were not necessary,” she said.
Hunter grew up in South Africa but studied in the US, where he worked in law enforcement for 20 years. He was a state trooper in Nevada before returning to South Africa.