Just the other day, the verbal abuse that reportedly came from a policeman went something along the lines of ” I’ll put [you] in the cells with the murderers and the rapists”, but this time the retort was a little more personal.

More than a month ago, on February 5, Prudence Hansen was arrested at Canal Walk in Cape Town when she and a colleague, Russel Dirks, were smoking in a stairwell near to where they worked, reports News24.

Hansen explained that the situation was sparked when one of the officers shouted: “Move there, move!”:

“They had to walk past us, down the stairs to get to their van. As the officer passed, I told him that we don’t mind moving, but there is a nicer way to ask people,” Hansen said.

She said the officer asked her: “What do you mean there is a better way to ask?”

The officer apparently turned around, threw his hands up in the air and told Hansen to “just go”.

“At this point my blood was boiling. I’m not defending my behaviour, but I was pissed off and told him: ‘Nou vat jy my vir ‘n gat. Voetsek!'”

According to her, the officer “blew his top”, grabbed her by the wrists and pulled her down the stairs.

She fell at the bottom of the stairwell and was dragged along the brick floor, she said.

After pleading with the officer to let her go, she punched him.

“He then opened the door to the police vehicle and wanted to chuck me on the seat. That’s when my head hit the van.”

Once she was in the van, she started kicking the officer:

“I’m not going to lie, I was aiming for the man’s balls [genitals].”

The 27-year-old tried to free her wrist from his grip, but then the police officer pulled her by her hoodie, she alleged. She claimed she was also choked:

“At that moment I remembered that I wasn’t wearing a T-shirt underneath. I pleaded with him, don’t do this. But he looked at me and said: ‘I don’t give a fuck.'”

It was at this moment that Dirks began to film the incident:

During the incident, a police officer allegedly told Hansen:

“I can’t wait until everybody has gone home so it’s just me and you left here, so I can fuck you up good.”

Last week, the video of her arrest has widely circulated on social media, and has now been shared more than 10 000 times:

“He [the policeman] wasn’t interested in having a civilised conversation. I feel that I bruised his ego as a man and, on top of it, he’s a cop.”

“After backup arrived, one officer also started dragging me and I took a swing at him,” she said.

The officers picked her up, put her in the back of the van and took her to Milnerton police station where she spent the night. She was charged with assault.

Set to appear in court on February 7, the case was dropped:

She said that the officer claimed in his statement that her boyfriend had stolen from one of the stores and that she had interfered with their investigation.

So she opened a case against the officer instead, and has since lost her job. However, she did not want the police officer to lose his job, she said:

“I feel like crying even now. I freeze when I see a policeman, an emotional Hansen told News24.

“I want him to see that it’s not okay to go around and treat people like shit.”

“It’s not okay to be rude. You need to have respect and common decency for others. You need to be a human being first, then a cop,” she said.

I understand that policemen must deal with a lot of lip every day of their lives, but it’s really time to grow up and deal with situations with a level of calm that transcends the circumstances.

[source:news24]