Strauss Lunyangwe
Windhoek-Windhoek City Police Chief Abraham Kanime led a mass weekend operation starting early on Friday morning and lasting until Sunday morning, that saw a large but unspecified number of people arrested at roadblocks in Windhoek for drunk driving and other transgressions.
The City Police said it was still tabulating the exact number of those detained, although there were reports the police cells in and around Windhoek were full to capacity as a result crime prevention operation over the weekend.
Kanime deployed officers from various departments to ensure the usual month-end mayhem was kept in check.
The officers focused on drunk driving, drinking in public, closing times of sheebens, illegal traders, noise pollution, loitering and under-aged drinking among others.
Kanime urged his officers to enforce the by-laws of the city on a daily basis. He also said City Police is moving towards multi-skilled police officers to enhance crime prevention and traffic control.
“The integrated team consists of officers who came from training who can do both duties. The main aim is to have all officers by 2019 trained as traffic officers, with another batch soon headed for training during the next financial year…” he said.
The officers were over the weekend dispatched around the city, including officers patrolling on foot, who were highly visible. A number of warrants of arrests were also executed.
The New Era team was invited to join the officers during their operation in the central business district (CBD), just before rush-hour., where the police set up an automatic numberplate recognition system that can identify numberplates linked to outstanding fines or stolen vehicles.
Officers also checked whether drivers had valid driving licences and roadworthy vehicles.
One taxi driver was found with only a copy of his driver’s licence and was fined N$1,000.
Also, after careful inspection of two drivers’ records, officers discovered there were pending warrants of arrests against them. They were then escorted to court to pay the amounts they had been fined with. They were also advised that if they failed to pay the fines immediately they would have to spend the weekend behind bars.