Grand mother mistaken for kidnapper

What manner of people are we breeding in this country? What manner of a country is this where a grand mum is not free to carry her daughter’s baby home from the hospital? What has happened to our respect for the aged? Why are people so animalistic and bloodthirsty that they won’t even spare the aged and the newborn from their depravity? 

I just read in the Punch the story of the poor woman who was taking her daughter’s newly-born baby home in Lagos when she was accosted by a mob who argued that she was too old to have a new born? Her explanations fell on deaf ears and they descended on her, beating and tearing her clothes.

The old woman held on to her grandchild and protected it as much as she could, but by the time the police rescued them, the poor baby was already bleeding!
Even if the woman was a kidnapper, does it make sense to beat the kidnapper together with the baby?

If you take part in mob justice, you may have attracted generational curses for your generations yet unborn. The blood of the innocent you shed in the belief that you are enforcing justice will cry to God for revenge.

Right now, I feel terrible for that poor old woman and her innocent grand-child.

Police Affairs Minister got that right

Navy Capt. (Rtd) Caleb Olubolade,
Police Affairs Minister

Police Affairs Minister Caleb Olubolade canvassed a point of view I have always reiterated on this blog: You need the public to fight crime.  

Hear the minister in Vanguard’s exclusive Front Page lead report on security challenge in the country today.

“Nobody can secure any community without intelligence. Without information, security agencies cannot succeed because they will be making wrong deployments and will be acting in different directions which will not help. Giving information is all that is needed and the security agencies will overcome.”

The minister should know. He was a Navy Captain.

The question is, 'what is being done to make information available to the forces? What is being done about inter-force cooperation and sharing of resources for crime-fighting?'

A key tool is the Emergency Number. Elsewhere in the world, it is the very first thing the government puts in place for efficient security. When a citizen sees something strange, the next thing is to whip out his phone and alert the police effortlessly and without spending a dime of his phone credit. 

More than a decade after access to phones has been liberalised by the GSM operators, and two years into GEJ’s govt, we still await a national, toll-free emergency number.

Lagos State has had to take its fate in its own hands by flagging off its own Emergency Numbers: 112 and 767. A more universally known number, 911 was apparently added quietly, recently.

But this is a project that is better managed by the Federal Government for uniformity. A single toll-free number should be used across the country. That way, promoting it will be easy, and recall will be much better.

A more serious federal government needs only a few months to make this functional. But a clueless one like we currently have will pussy-foot forever, while precious lives are lost to terrorism and other forms of crime.

Policeman who killed man in front of his family says ‘Sorry, I did it’

Corporal Gabriel Credit: OnlineNews

 

This must be the first time this is happening in Nigeria. The police corporal, Corporal Gabriel, who shot a man in front of his daughter last Saturday, has admitted to The Guardian that he did it. 

The victim was reportedly taking his wife and daughter home when he saw policemen around the car of his friend on their street. He alighted in front of his house and walked to the police even though his wife protested. Next thing was that he was shot twice.

In reaction, some police image maker had told the press that the policeman was attacked by hoodlums who wanted to take his gun. How does that sit with the statement of the man in the centre of it all now.

Interestingly too, the police corporal is not labelling the unfortunate man a robber.

He said: “I actually killed Azeez Omotosho, aka Panel. It was the Devil’s work; Please, forgive me. I was not myself. I WAS DRUNK when I perpetrated the act.

For being truthful, does he deserve leniency? And what should happen to the leader of his team who knew he was drunk and allowed him to wield a gun?

 

Beware of uniformed hustlers at Berger

If you drive through Ojodu Berger Bus Stop on the Lagos Ibadan Expressway, take special precaution not to pick up or drop people on either side of the bus stop.

If you must, go further away from the bus stop and ‘shine your eyes’ very well.

LASTMA officials and policemen have of late turned the bus stop to ‘work-chop’. Remember the year is drawing to a close. People are getting desperate for money for the Yuletide. 

Actually, there are ‘No Parking’ signs on either side of the road, but if you reason that they are only meant for commercial drivers who park indiscriminately and not private car owners who drop off people in seconds and zoom off, you will be making a mistake.

They will pounce on you and quote Lagos State Traffic law that specifies a fine of N35, 000 for such an offence.  It will then be up to you to offer something impressive enough as a bribe for them to let you run along to meet your appointments.  

A police van blocked me yesterday as I tried to pick my wife. The waiting could not have been up to a second, because she had not even opened the door when they came from their hiding.

One of the boys rudely told me I had committed a traffic obstruction offence by picking someone at Berger. I was to follow them to their office somewhere to pay my fine. At his command, one of them got into my car and was piloting me to the location.

I got off by demanding to see their most senior officer, to whom I introduced myself and explained that I did not park, but was to pick my wife for less than a minute.

He sent me off with a warning in espirit de corp. (I spent some of my early years in journalism on the police/judicial beat.)

 

IGP’s tinted glass order is new avenue for extortion

IGP, MD Abubakar

The IGP stopped his men from mounting random road blocks across the country when he assumed duties, and voila, the incidents of police shooting bus conductors and passengers over N20 bribe nose-dived. He received accolades for the move. Now he is undoing the achievement he made in that regard with his latest order to his men to impound vehicles with any type of tinted windows.

Just drove past the men in black arguing with a gentleman in a sparkling Honda Accord 2008 model at Opebi Link road intersection. The argument was intense in the scorching sun. I could only imagine that it had to be about the car’s lightly tinted back windows.  Abi, that’s the only reason policemen can randomly stop motorists on a busy road now.

When the man was done blowing grammar, he would either let his car be impounded or call his accusers aside and ‘resolve’ the matter amicably, because like it or not, those policemen are on a legal duty, backed by the order of the IGP.

The IGP has simply given a new meal ticket to his boys. In the confines of his cosy office, he may threaten fire and brimstones against his men who extort motorists, but that is his own reality. The reality in the scorching sun outside is that only saints would turn down an irresistible settlement terms offered by an affluent gentleman in a posh Honda Accord. And I think we are all agreed the men of the Nigeria police force are no saints.  

Commotion at Berger

People gathered around the bus into which the
bloodied body was loaded.

A bit of commotion at Berger Bus Stop on the Lagos Ibadan Expressway inward toll gate when I passed now.

Crowds gathered on either side of the road, looking as police men loaded a bloodied body wrapped in white cloth into the back of a danfo bus (in the picture above). Armed policemen were everywhere. Couldn't wait to find out what's happening, lest I added to the long traffic already building.

Confessions of a US traffic cop, lessons for LASTMA

 

Nigerian police officers, LASTMA officials, FRSC men and others involved in road safety and traffic law enforcement have a lot to learn from this American police officer, especially in the area of use of discretion and responsible traffic law enforcement.

Mike Brucks retired from the El Paso Police Department as a traffic cop last May after 22 years and almost 40,000 tickets, by his estimation. He was featured by Yahoo!

 Here are some of his stories from the road and tips for motorists looking to avoid a ticket.

Besides speeding, which is the reason for most tickets, what's most likely to get a traffic cop's attention?

 

Seatbelts, cell phones, red lights, and stop signs. I concentrate on all the things that can cause an accident. There are some cops who write tickets for expired plates, for having no insurance or registration, but you're not going to crash because of any of that. I focused on safety issues—that's what I like to do.

 

Do traffic cops think it's cheating to hide behind billboards?

 

No. You've got a radar detector; you know where we hide. If you are thinking we are hiding somewhere, it's because you're speeding.

 

Do you have favourite hiding places?

 

I stay on the freeway mostly. That's where there are more speeders. I'll park under overpasses, on bridges. I need to be able to start the bike and accelerate to go after someone. If there are a lot of exits, I can miss [a speeder] who can maybe get off at an exit, and then it's too late to catch him.

 

How much leeway do you give someone before writing them a speeding ticket?

 

The speed limit in Texas used to be 60 mph, [and] well, out on the clear road where there's a lot of visibility I give people leeway. I wouldn't write tickets until they got to 80 mph. I've never worked an area where the speed limit drops a lot without warning, what I call a trap. If there's a new speed limit that's lower, it [takes] time for people to get used to it and I don't write tickets there.

 

What can a driver say to get out of a ticket?

 

When someone tells me that a family member has just been sent to the hospital and they're on their way, how can I ticket them for that? I tell them that they're not being safe, that they need to slow down and stay safe. That's about it.

 

I think now it's much more of a rat-race world than it was 30 years ago. The workforce has generated that. People have to be at work on time or risk getting fired, kids have to be picked up and taken places—it's just citizens in a hurry. Ninety-eight percent of the people I stop are law-abiding good citizens, and they say they have no reason to speed. That's an easy ticket. They're not happy, but I could go months without any problems, without anyone cussing me out. I wrote a lot of warnings, too, but it all depends on the situation, if they were being safe.

Are speed limits too low?

 

No, the traffic engineers, at least in Texas, are pretty good. It's not that some parts of the highway are safer for speeding, it's that drivers aren't always paying attention. People die on lonely deserted stretches of road too. There are a lot of times drivers aren't concentrating. They need to understand you're going 100 feet per second on the highway. Above 75 mph things just happen so fast, [whether it's] a flat tire, a coyote, wind, dirt, or rocks. It's not that much better now that cars are safer; reaction times are still the same.

 

What's the toughest ticket you've had to write?

 

I clocked a woman coming down from New Mexico on Highway 54 at 111 mph. She had just been stopped for going 90 mph 15 minutes [earlier] in New Mexico. Everybody has a reason, and I want to know it. I always ask why someone was speeding, and that's just to open things up. I want to know what they're thinking, if they need my help for something. She had been crying, and the tears didn't just start—they'd been going on a long time, you can tell. She was on her way to a motel in El Paso to catch her husband who was shacked up with another woman there, cheating. How do you write a ticket for that?

 

Who's the craziest speeder you've seen?

 

I stopped a guy going 136 mph. I caught him mostly because he thought he lost me. I came up beside him and blocked his front wheel on the curb. The hardest part after that was now I have to be courteous and respectful, although he could have killed someone, and that makes me angry. It's really too bad, he was a good kid, never been in trouble, but now he had to go to jail for felonious evading, and that's really going to wreck his life.

 

When do you not chase a speeder?

 

I clocked a guy on a crotch-rocket bike doing 189 mph. Just let him go. Since police departments began to get sued for chasing speeders, around 1995, there's a fine line. You have to determine if you can catch him, if chasing him will cause an accident for him, for you, for the public. There's no way to catch anyone like that. ..

Cop mistakenly posts photo of his manhood on Facebook

Sacked: Daemon Johnson

 

A cop who wanted to send the picture of his manhood to his girlfriend but pressed the wrong button on his mobile phone and made it public has been sacked.

Daemon Johnson, 45, a police inspector, is now claiming he was sacked unfairly for that error.
The experienced officer, who has served his force for 25 years, was fired after stunned colleagues spotted the explicit image.

 

He is now considering appealing against his dismissal for gross misconduct.

Mr Johnson, who calls himself a “20th Century copper in a 21st Century force”, said: “It has been so dreadful having this hanging over my head for the past few months.

"I made a mistake on my phone keypad and I have paid for that mistake with my career.

“I have been inundated with messages of support from all over the place, a huge number of them from colleagues.

"But I’ve also had great support from ­­ordinary members of the public living in the areas in which I served.

“Although I understand the Professional Standards panel decision, I consider it to be wholly disproportionate to the matters for which I was held to account.

“I have 25 years of excellent service and put in place a number of innovative community schemes in Northampton that benefit those who may be disadvantaged or at risk of harm.”

 

My close shave with jail term

Believe it or not, there's a 'No Entry' sign behind this umbrella at
Ijaye Bus Stop along Lagos-Abeokuta Express way

Voila! There it is. You only need to come down from your vehicle and squeeze behind the bread seller to see it. The traffic law is against street trading as well, but the police would probably not go after this bread seller until some officer's pregnant wife has massive craving for sun-bathed bread!



Writers are like prophets. They have no power of knowing the exact time what they predict will come to past.

In August, upon the imminence of the new Lagos Traffic Law being signed by the Governor of Lagos State, I pointed out the ease with which many law abiding Nigerians could walk into jail, simply driving from one part of Lagos to another. Today, I experienced it.

I lived in the Millennium Estate, Ijaye-Ojokoro for about four years up to last October. For those not conversant with that area, the estate is off Ijaye Bus Stop, along the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway.

From eternity, people going to the nearby Local Council headquarters, the customary court and the marriage registry inside the complex, the popular Jankara market, the Millennium Estate in reference, and Agbado Crossing exited the expressway at Ijaye Bus Stop.

I was visiting the area again today around 11 am and exited the expressway as usual at Ijaye Bus Stop only to find myself in the waiting hands of fully armed policemen. One with AK 47 in hand, barked at me to park and alight from my vehicle. With the urgency and menace in his voice some people might actually think a notorious robbery kingpin had just walked into a carefully planned police ambush.

I did as I was told, and waited for further instructions. The officer soon marched me to a spot on the expressway to show me a 'No Entry' sign, tucked neatly behind the huge umbrella of a bread seller right beside the expressway. Sweet relief! At least, it was not a case of me matching the description of a Boko Haram cell commander.



This bus was parked by the entry to Ijaye, just beside
the bread seller, when I drove in. I took this picture, went to
argue some more and returned to take the bread seller,
by which time it had been driven off.

I asked the officer if that was all, and he glared at me with open hostility. Then, he took a few moments to educate me that I had just committed a very serious offence of plunging into a one-way street. 
 
I could not have possibly guessed that the road had become one-way traffic, because it was quite wide. The only trouble the road had always had especially in the evenings was that roadside traders took considerable portions of the road on either side to display their goods, while yellow buses plying Agbado Crossing converted a whole lane on the right side to motorpark, constricting human and vehicular traffic. One would naturally think that those were the issues that needed to be fixed to restore sanity to that road. It would be hard to find any resident of that area who would endorse changing that popular access road to a one-way traffic street. 

But beyond all that, two things were clearly wrong with the 'No Entry' sign by the road side at the time I passed. One, the road sign had been completely swallowed from view by a huge umbrella providing shade for a bread seller. Secondly, a broken-down bus was parked by the side of the bread seller, sealing the fate of hapless motorists coming from Abule Egba.

I explained all these to the officer, and he had  a ready answer: “Ignorance is not an excuse in law.” He delivered it with such a condescending air as to make it clear such a simple thing was what I ought to have known if my education was not suspect.

To my argument about a bus and a bread seller's umbrella completely covering the supposed sign, he said I could canvass those fine points to the judge on Monday morning. He might be so kind as to accept them for my flagrant violation of Lagos Traffic Law. But before then, could I be so kind as to stop disturbing him with my 'grammar'?

Dozens of other motorists were walking into the booby trap by the minute. Some were arrested, but seeing that they had more than they could handle at any point in time, the police team would routinely ask the excess ‘traffic violators’ to reverse and take alternative routes. For those under arrest, some brisk business was underway, with the nearby petrol filling station acting as the negotiation area.

I wasn’t done disturbing the officer with my 'grammar'. I followed him around as he apprehended other hapless motorists, and argued that the team ought to use their discretion to release people with a warning and arrest only those who refused to heed their instructions, but I might as well have been speaking Greek for all the difference it made.

He told me my offence was a 'jail-able' offence and he did not write the law. The only reason he could contemplate using his discretion in my favour was if I could come up with N10,000! At that juncture, I let him be and sought out his superior officer who watched his boys from a distance.

He turned out to be receptive. I advanced the same points as earlier enumerated and he quite agreed that the sign was obstructed, even though he made no move to correct the situation. He argued that even if the umbrella had not been there, people who had used the road for years would still drive in oblivious of the sign. 

In the end, he used his discretion to let me go and sin no more. That is how come you are reading this o! Otherwise, I would have been cooling my heels in some detention room awaiting trial tomorrow morning!

On a serious note, I asked myself a question as I drove away: would I have been so courageous to insist on not paying a bribe if the superior officer had not used his discretion to let me go, especially considering that the offence carries a jail sentence? Would I not have happily negotiated the asking price?

Many years ago, I recall telling a mischievous local council traffic official that rather than give him the bribe he was asking for, I would happily pay into the coffers of government the official fine which was five times  the bribe he asked for.

Could I have courageously said the same to those policemen that Sunday morning when I knew the offence, contrived or not, carried a jail term?