Abuse of Power

I probably must have written about all of my encounter with law enforcement officers, so today's post won't be about me because there's literally nothing else to write. But it's about an incident that happened right in front of my mom's shop many years ago that has simply refused to leave my memory.

Most law enforcement officers, especially in Africa are known to abuse their powers a lot. They ask you to do all sort of embarrassing things in public and then hit you anyhow they want even if you did nothing wrong because they know you can do absolutely nothing to them.

But one thing they're really famous for (especially the military) is embarrassing you or worse whenever they you wearing a camouflage uniform, even if it's fake. Sometimes it doesn't exactly have to be a camouflage uniform, it could just look like it and not be it, you would still get punished anyway.

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Photo by israel palacio

I remember this one time when I was at my mom's shop, there was this military man who stood at the middle of the road having a conversation with someone. From the way they talked, one could tell they haven't seen each other in a while and were happy to finally be able to meet and talk. But something happened few minutes later that I felt was wrong and an abuse of power.

This young man was walking down the street when he walked past this two friends talking to each other (the military man and his friend), when suddenly the military man asked his friend to hold on and then called the young man who just walked past them. At first I had no idea why he had called him but seeing the short he had on, I immediately knew what was wrong.

The young man had a military camouflage shorts on and that was the reason the military man had called him. He then proceeded to ask him a couple of questions that I couldn't hear but from the looks on the young man face and the way he kept on saying no, my guess was that the military guy was asking him if he was in the military too.

Now, if putting on a military camouflage is indeed something wrong to do, I believe the military man should had given him a warning and then asked him to go back home and take it off, but what happened next was totally different from what I was expecting. He asked the young man to take off the shorts right in the middle of the street where they stood and had asked him to walk away only putting on his underwear.

Luckily for this young man, it was almost as if he knew something like that was going to happen, so he had the longest underwear that I have ever seen in my life and unless people looked really hard, it would be a bit difficult to tell that all he had on were his underwear.

That young man had walked back home that day feeling embarrassed because the whole street saw what happened and I honestly felt that wasn't right. Unfortunately like I said, we live in a country where getting bullied by a military man has no consequences against the military man so they just do what they want.

Luckily for me, I haven't had a personal encounter with them because I know how to not be on their radar and I plan on keeping it that way.


This is my entry to the Hive Learners community weekly contest.



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12 comments
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Law enforcement officers may be very crazy
Once they get a very little position, they tend to behave anyhow... I've had encounters with them too and I concluded that most of them are rude

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Yup, most them are rude and it's because they all have this mentality of being untouchable.

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It might put a shame to the young man but at least the situation does not escalate anymore worst. It could turn sour very quickly if the man did not obey as this people have access to guns.

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Yeah that is very true. A lot of things could had gone wrong if he had disobeyed.

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losing little dignity was better than losing life

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If they don't want people to wear their clothes and look like a soldier they should sue the company that produces such cloth for other people to wear.

Not going around embarrassing innocent people on the road for putting on cloth
Imagine if that boy didn't had anything under is he going to go back home naked
I still don't understand this Africa military 🪖 people.

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That was my thought exactly, would he had gone home naked if he had no underwear on.. It's really crazy, I tell you.

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Due to the power bestowed upon them they feel that they are gods.

I have encountered a similar incident, I was putting on a camouflage top that has a colourful sequence design in front, yet they stopped me and asked me to pull the top, questions like how did I get the top, "of course I bought it from the market", I replied. They were just laughing at me, I didn't know they were serious until the increased in number, they asked me to pull it, drop it on the floor and go 🙄 aside bra I was not putting on anything inside, my skirt was a short one I can't pull it up, worst of it all my so called friend has left me, she denied knowing me 🤧 let me just stop here.

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Wow that is crazy!!!! So you went home only wearing your bra??

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No, I started pleading thou it wasn't my plead that freed me but some women around there pleaded on my behalf, the soldiers said their anger was my response "of course,I bought it from the market".

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Well, that's clearly an abuse of power, but they do it because they know no one would do anything to them.

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