POLICE SHOULD MAKE COMMUNITIES SAFE AGAIN

ONE of the things our country, Zambia, is mostly and commonly known for is that it is peaceful.
Zambia was a place where people always felt safe, walked about on the streets, being at home and did not have to worry about criminals, apart from the petty thieves like pick-pockets.
Zambia was once a land of peace and joy because security was assured and people always lived with a significant peace of mind about their safety and that of their property.
The nation did not have many incidents of murders, burglaries, robberies, and other serious and violent crimes.
Life was then good, because people did not have many worries especially about their safety. Every one trusted everyone and all lived in peace and harmony.
But our concern now is that the security situation in our nation has completely changed for the worse.
Walking on our streets is unsafe; our homes are no longer secure and the safety of our property is not assured. Our lives are now always under threat from criminals and living is no longer interesting.
The criminals seem to have taken an upper hand in controlling our lives, our streets and homes from the security personnel because they now appear to reign without any fear of anyone and the law.
The criminals now terrorize people and homes without fear of any one and with great impunity of the law. Little also seem to be done by the security forces to control and contain the situation.
Take for instance the harassment of people in some parts of Lusaka, the Copperbelt and other parts of Zambia by the so-called junkies and other youth criminal gangs.
The criminal activities of these terror groups are very well known to the police and have been going on for some time now. The police in fact even know who is exactly involved in these criminal behaviour and yet they still let them walk the streets and harm more people.
It’s an understandable to have a situation like what has reportedly been happening in areas like, Lusaka’s Makeni area, where junkie gangs, some of them in excess of 30 youths per group, every night attack lone moving persons using an assortment of dangerous weapons, from as early as 19:00hours, and grab cellular phones and
other personal belongings from them.
Similar cases of such criminal activities have also been reported in other areas of Lusaka, like Kalingalinga,Mtendere and Chazanga Compounds, for instance, but our police still seem uninterested to act as these gangs still continue to roam the streets and harm people.
The police have a duty to ensure that our streets are made safe again and that our homes are secure once more.
They have a duty to ensure that our property is safe and that living in Zambia is once again made crime-free,peaceful and interesting.
The police should do so by purging the streets of all misfits because misfits cannot be the ones to control our society. They have no place there as they belong in jail.
We should not, and we cannot, allow a section of the community, like the youth, to hold us to ransom as a nation by harassing us, maiming us and even slaughtering us.
We have the ability to immediately stop it for the sake of our safety and that of our children. Let’s act now to make our communities safe again.