WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2010-09-22 Time: 12:00:04 Posted By: News Poster
Harare – We are suffering one of those periodic surges in armed robberies, as a couple of new gangs think that they can get away with violent crime, but this time a policeman was killed when he fought back during an armed raid on a nightclub in Bulawayo.
Zimbabwe’s armed robbery statistics tend to reflect the small number of gangs that turn to this crime. For several months we have no armed robberies, then there is a step up as a new gang starts operating and sometimes an extra step as yet another gang joins in.
And within a few weeks the statistics start stepping down as the police track down these gangs and account for them. Sometimes gang members surrender, and are arrested, taken to court and sentenced to long jail terms.
Sometimes the gangs want to fight it out, and criminals get shot.
For we must remember that while the police are required to use minimum force, and are required to protect innocent members of the public in the vicinity of a gun fight, they are quite entitled to open fire on armed criminals, especially when they have good grounds to believe that these armed criminals are about to start shooting at bystanders or police.
There are times when the doctrine of minimum force requires police to shoot back.
That is standard police doctrine everywhere in the world.
Zimbabwe’s police are not generally gun happy. The use of firearms is strictly controlled and unless there are very special circumstances, such as when police come under fire from criminals, warning shots have to be fired first.
This is why in the odd case over the years when most people would consider that firearms have been wrongly used by police, there has been such an outcry.
We note the police have changed the way they now set up roadblocks, for example, so that the odds that innocent people could be shot is reduced to almost nil.
Those drum and boom roadblocks do slow traffic down and irritate the law-abiding majority by doing so.
But they also make it very easy for police not to use excessive force.
You basically have to smash through the roadblock before anyone opens fire, or else be stupid enough to pull out a gun while driving at around 5km/h and so be an easy target for precision shooting that will not endanger anyone else.
Even armed criminals can escape a gun fight if they wish. They simply have to stick their hands in the air and surrender. Police are bound to protect everyone, including an armed criminal who is not an immediate threat.
In fact any armed person, innocent or guilty or even an undercover police detective from another unit, can avoid a lot of trouble by obeying police orders, being careful not to make a potentially threatening move and inviting the police to remove his weapon and identity cards to check him out.
Armed robbers who have already killed, and the police are now hunting down such a gang, are particularly dangerous. They almost certainly feel that they have nothing to lose by killing again to escape arrest and so are far more likely to open fire.
The difference between a sentence of death or life imprisonment for murder, and 10 or 15 years for robbery, is sufficiently large that an armed killer will be prepared to risk a gun fight. And he has crossed that threshold of killing.
So police tracking him down do have to be specially prepared to open fire. Yet they are also bound to protect the innocent public.
This is why the police in these circumstances give specific orders that may impair dignity but also ensure that the public are not killed or injured by an armed criminal trying to escape arrest.
We now just have to wait while the latest gangs, including the gang that has already murdered, are hunted down.
We are confident the police will keep their good record of bringing the gangs to justice while at the same time protecting members of the public.
Original Source: 
Published by the government of Zimbabwe
Original date published: 22 September 2010
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201009220202.html?viewall=1