When the Police get high

In the Daily Monitor, it was reported last week that police in Gulu district had arrested a police officer for smoking and being in possession of marijuana. The high officer (that should have been high-ranking) was arrested after his colleagues tipped-off their bosses of his strange behavior during working hours. In the story though, we didn’t tell you what that strange behavior was; that bit was intentionally left out for By The Way to fill in. So, how did these men of the law detect that their colleague was serving other forces, and not just the police force? What gave afande away? It was very hard to get in touch with all the officers in this story so I did due diligence and made a few (intelligent?) guesses on what might have transpired.

Afande was flagging down animals instead of cars. His colleagues first became suspicious when he motioned for a stray dog to stop. He then asked for its driving license. Naturally, the dog didn’t stop (or have a driving permit for that matter); if anything, it seemed to move away from what it probably perceived as an attacker. Afande saw this as dissent; how could a driver refuse to stop when commanded by the outstretched arm of the law? A heated pursuit ensued (much like the ones in movies where cars hurtle down streets, knocking over food stalls and surprisingly not killing anyone in the process) but this chase involved a lanky figure running in zig zag and a yelping dog running for its life.

Afande’s colleagues murmured a few things but eventually brushed it off – maybe he was just happy. The next thing though was that at parade, afande would suddenly break out in dance. He’d energetically motion for his friends to join in, asking whether they couldn’t hear that great Lingala song playing.

It seems though what eventually pushed his colleagues over was when he started to walk away from them to take calls from Obama. He’d talk for a number of minutes, laughing heartily, punctuating the call with “Yes President Obama”, before finally hanging up. It didn’t help that many times during these ‘calls’, his phone was off, from not being charged.

Not wanting to find out how high this road would go, afande’s colleagues finally turned him in.