empd ekurhuleni

Photo: Twitter / Yusuf Abramjee

EMPD places alleged drunk officer and supervisor on suspension

The officer will remain in suspension, pending the outcome of an investigation led by the EMPD.

empd ekurhuleni

Photo: Twitter / Yusuf Abramjee

A day after social media was in up in arms over the viral footage showing a drunk Ekurhuleni Metro Police Department (EMPD) officer barely able to stand upright, let alone walk, the Mayor of Ekurhuleni, Mzwandile Masina, has vowed to take harsh action to send a stern message to law enforcement in the city.

Drunk EMPD officer: What’s the latest?

The viral video has left a bitter taste in the mouths of the province’s leadership. It was first shared by well-renowned crime journalist, Yusuf Abramjee, on Twitter.

In the video, the officer was allegedly under the influence of alcohol. According to Abramjee, the officer “nearly crashed into a biker in Benoni and threatened to shoot the man while he was recording him.”

In response to the footage, a shocked Herman Mashaba, the Mayor of Johannesburg urged South Africans to draw lessons on how deep we, as a nation, are in trouble.

“South Africa, we are surely in deep trouble. Let’s all look at ourselves in the mirror and ask what happened,” Mashaba wrote in a tweet.

According to Masina, General Mapeyeye, the Chief of Police in Ekurhuleni, has since placed the accused officer, as well as his supervisor (we assume it is the female officer in the video), under suspension, pending the outcome of an investigation.

Ekurhuleni Mayor: “Rest assured action will be taken”

The mounting pressure on social media reached the office of Ekurhuleni’s Executive Mayor, Mzwandile Masina, who, in a tweet, vowed to take prompt action against the officer.

Nowhere in his tweet was it stated if the officer was indeed drunk, on duty. This is because there have been conflicting accounts on the officer’s condition, on social media.

While some believed that the officer was certainly drinking and driving, under the influence, others suggested that he may have been struggling with a health condition.

The latter was corroborated by a tweep who claimed to have seen the officer allegedly walk out of a Dischem, in the Ekurhuleni shopping centre, shortly before he was caught on video struggling to stand upright.

Regardless, Masina stated that this was going to be thoroughly investigated by the relevant authorities within the EMPD. He vowed to keep the public in the loop with the outcomes of the probe.