On the night of 13th August, 2011, I was at work at the Emergency department of the Port Moresby General Hospital, when an incident happened. The next morning, I reported it to my blog viewers, under the title Boy shot by Cops.
A month passed, when the story hit the headlines in Post Courier in their 14th September print. The front page article titled ‘Help our son’ featured the family of Lincoln Menda, and their plea for help for their son to get life-saving operation overseas where there are appropriate facilities.
Allegedly, Lincoln became the victim of a police shooting on the night of August 13, at the 4 Mile bus stop. The bullet penetrated his skull and the brain, and a fragment is currently lodged in his skull, or possibly the brain since both his legs and the right arm are paralysed.
The dilemma now is that the fragment cannot be removed here in PNG, not because of lack of human expertise but because of lack of sophisticated machines to support him during and after surgery. Though the cost will be high, it will be less than half, or even a quarter of what was spent on Sir. Michael during his stay in Singapore.
If you ask for my opinion, I think the State should meet the necessary cost to remove the bullet fragments and save this young man, because that bullet fragment came from a state-owned rifle, which was fired by a state-employed personnel.
The Post Courier reported that according to police reports, ‘Lincoln was shot while attempting to flee from the police vehicle.’ Well, I must say that the report is defective and full of flaws.
Firstly, Lincoln’s punishment is too big for his crime. I don’t know what the relevant PNG law says, but I am fully confident that shooting a victim is not the right punishment for a victim that attempts to flee from the police vehicle. Biblically, all sins are punishable only by death, regardless of their seriousness as viewed by man. But it is not for humans to inflict the punishment of death; only a sinless God can allow such punishment.
The police officers should have gotten their asses out of the vehicle and chase the fleeing offender. Instead, they just watched their trigger happy reservist target-practised on Lincoln. More logical, if they want to shoot, is to target the legs so that the offender will stop running. Guns should only be used against on offenders that also threaten cops with gun. I wonder why police personnel don’t shoot buai sellers that flee when they see police vehicle approaching.
Secondly, the police reports contradicted what they verbally reported to the doctors on the night of the incident. I was one of the attending doctors that night, and I didn’t hear a police officer admitting that cops shot the boy. All they said was that they were called in to stop a street fight, but when they arrived, they saw the boy badly injured so they rushed him to the hospital.
Because they lied at the first place, their official report is sure to be faulty. Two wrongs will never make a right: when one wrong shuts the front door, the other wrong will shut the back door, so that Mr. Right is trapped, and cannot come to your aid.
It seems to me that some cops are shooting petty offenders as target-practice. Their uniforms are used as cloaks of power over the civilians, and the rifles as wand to control them. They cause fear and confusion to reign in the hearts of people, and even terror in the minds of innocent people that they are supposed to protect.
If that is the truth, then I’m afraid I’ll have to call then terrorists!
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