Ex-police officer fined for possessing drugs

A FORMER Bulawayo police officer has been sentenced to 18 months in prison and fined $300 after he was found in possession of dagga and unregistered medicines.

Samuel Tambooneyi (30), who was arrested in July this year while performing community service for a similar offence, pleaded not guilty to possession of dagga and unregistered medicines charges when he appeared before Bulawayo magistrate Mr Jeconiah Ncube.

The magistrate fined him $300 for the first count and said he will be imprisoned for 30 days if he does not pay the fine.

The magistrate also sentenced him to a wholly suspended six months in prison for five years on condition of good behaviour.

He was sentenced to 12 months in prison for the second count.

“In respect of the second count, the accused person has been sentenced to 12 months in prison. Six months have been suspended on condition of good behaviour. A further six months has been suspended on condition that the accused person performs 210 hours of community service,” said the magistrate.

Prosecuting, Ms Martha Tafa said on July 31 at around 11AM, detectives received information that the ex-cop had dagga and unregistered medicines.

They spotted Tambooneyi in a black Honda CRV vehicle parked along Masotsha Ndlovu Avenue between Fort Street and Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo Street.

“They approached him and conducted a search in the vehicle where they discovered dagga in a black and white small bag which was on his lap.

“Further searches were conducted in the car where 11×10 diazepam tablets, 2 sildenafil tablets and100 millilitres of salterpyn syrup were recovered leading to Tambooneyi’s arrest,” Ms Tafa said.

The recovered drugs had an estimated street value of $350.

Last year in December, Tambooneyi was arrested for a similar offence with his wife Pride Chaingeni (27), Chisiiwa Nyarai (20), Allen Ngwenya (33) and Zibusiso Sibanda (20) for running a drug cartel that reportedly sold dangerous substances to clients that included school children.

Police recovered about 5kg of dagga, 420x100ml of Adco-Salterpyn Cough Syrup and Bron Cleer Cough Syrup including about 300 Diazepam tablets.

Tambooneyi said he had sourced the “high-grade weed (dagga)” from Malawi and got the cough mixtures and tablets from a syndicate based in South Africa.

He was sentenced to perform community service. — @zinyuke98