Dear Editor,
REFORMS in the Zambia Police Service should start with the traffic section.
Police officers particularly those from the traffic section are perceived to be the most corrupt and these must be dismissed so as to bring sanity to the service.
This does not mean that police officers from other sections are not corrupt.
Corruption is a vice which must be nipped in the bud. It is detrimental to national development as it involves financial illicit activities where corruption has occurred.
However, corruption involves two parties namely the corrupter and the corrupted. The act of corruption involves kickbacks or bribes as it were.
Most police officers are very corrupt as alluded earlier. They obtain money from the public whenever an offence has been committed.
The corrupt police officers would prefer bribes to taking the offender to the police station or police post when someone has transgressed the law or rather commited an offence.
Even if someone has been arrested and he or she is in police cells, some police officers would demand for money before the suspect is granted police bond.
The point worth noting is that the police bond is free and the suspect is not supposed to pay for the issuance of the police bond.
Some police officers operate outside the confinement of the law owing to lack of professionalism. This does not augur well as it tarnishes the corporate image of the police service.
In the case of the police officers from the traffic section, you would find that they mount illegal roadblocks and siphon money from the unsuspected motorists even on flimsy offences. All said and done, it is high time the corrupt police officers were arrested and dismissed so as to bring sanity to the police service.
ELEMIYA PHIRI,
Lusaka.
