Dave is…
Getting carjacked.
Well, not me specifically. After all I just witnessed the aftermath, the shot up car, the three hour police beating, the later supplementary beating at the police station and the brilliantly comical dénouement the next morning. But I feel that’s sufficient to say I finally got my South African crime experience.
The day started off pretty sweet. I got out of work early to surf, but the wave report was lousy so audibled it into an afternoon at Max’s pool with him and Micha and a couple others. When we done lounging around in the sun drinking we moved to La Med, the seaside outdoor bar to enjoy the sunset and meet up with Justin and Gabe. We hung out there solidly into the evening. When things were breaking up a little before 11pm I went and met up with the Michigan girls Mei Li and Katie at Touch of Madness, a neat bar converted from an old townhouse in Obz, the gentrifying (but still in the very early stages) neighborhood in the southern suburbs. We were there till 1am. They parked about four houses down from the bar to the right and I was just around the corner at the end of the block to the left so, given that the outside seating of the bar was full of people, and Obz on a Friday night is pretty lively it never occurred to me (gentleman that I am) that I should walk them to their car.
I walked to mine without incident or concern. In fact I paused to get my iPod out of the trunk and cue up something mellow for the drive home, but I had barely pulled out of the spot when Mei Li called and told me very curtly to get back to the bar. She didn’t say why but while brusque she seemed really calm so I wasn’t sure the reason. I still wasn’t sure when I walked in. I parked right by their old spot but the car wasn’t there and I didn’t see them in the front of the bar. In fact, I immediately ran into a girl whose originally from Illinois that the bartender had been telling me I needed to meet so I actually thought somehow he had caught the girls on their way out and Mei Li had called me back to meet this girl.
That notion was quickly disabused when Mei Li came around the corner and asked me what the hell I was doing. She called me back cause they had just been carjacked, at gunpoint. Right after they got into their car, as Katie was putting it into gear two guys ripped the door open, thrust a gun in her face and began to physically haul her out of the car and throw her to the ground. On the other side, Mei Li was rapidly abandoning the passenger seat. They then jumped in and tore off at which point the girls fled back to the bar.
I was shocked. Not by the crime, cause while carjacking is generally thought of as a Joburg crime, it’s been on the rise here and there has been a general spike in crime in Obz recently, most notably a UCT student getting shot and killed last month. No, what shocked me was how coolly the girls were taking it. Katie cried a little and had the shakes off and on for an hour but that was it and Mei Li was a fucking rock. Real frosty. At worst she was pissed off cause Katie’s purse with her phone, credit card, and most obnoxiously both their house keys was in the backseat.
So we sat there, waiting for the cops to show and trying to cancel phones and credit cards. It took fuck-all forever for the cops to arrive, well over an hour despite a couple calls asking where they were. They didn’t get there till after 2am but when they did they had the astonishing news that they thought they had the car and needed us to come identify it.
Let’s be clear, the cops in South Africa never solve anything. EVER. I mean this car was gone. They don’t ever recover hijacked vehicles. It’s a joke, so the idea that they had actually done it, and done it so immediately was incomprehensible. This was also the only point in what would ultimately be an all-night ordeal that the girls failed me. I was fucking dying to do the Big Lebowski bit from where he asks the cop if they have any leads on who stole his car. “Leads, yeah, sure. I’ll just check with the boys down at the crime lab, they’ve got four more detectives working on the case. They got us working in shifts! HAHAH Leads. Leads! HAHAHA”. I mean have you ever had so perfect an opportunity to use that line? But it bombed. It wasn’t that the girls were too upset to appreciate the humor; they simply had never seen the movie. What a waste. Sigh. (Ed. Note: A few weeks later when Josh was out here visiting and heard the story his instant reaction was to go to this line. So I am not the only one.)
So anyway, these two detectives pile the three of us into the back of their unmarked car (My presence was apparently there as their protector though I can’t imagine if I had been present for the jacking I would have done anything but scream like a little girl) and we tear off to the police station. It appears we only went there so they could brief their supervisor who was waiting outside angrily for an update. I found this mystifying too. Their boss said he’d been getting calls from his superiors and needed an update for them. Why on earth would anyone beyond street level be hearing about a simple carjacking? This shit and worse happens constantly and merits no more than a disinterested and barely literate police report, not high level attention.
It started to become clearer as we went down the N1 highway. Apparently an officer in Obz had seen the car zoom away, thought it looked suspicious and given chase. That seemed to explain some of the added attention, specially given how far down the N1 we were going. It must have been a 10+ minute car chase even at high speeds given the ground they covered.
(Look closely, though the quality is terrible because I didnt want the cops to see me taking pictures, you can make out one of the bullet holes in the middle of the triangular window right in the front of the car.)
It became way clearer when we excited the highway and got to the neighborhood roundabout where the car was. It was crawling with cops and emergency vehicles. The chase evidently ended in a high speed gun battle that ended only when the girls’ car smashed into a large, two-support-pole traffic sign. The damage that caused was barely noticed. Our eyes were drawn to the number of bullet holes peppering the windshield. Good lord that must have been bad.
We weren’t allowed out of the car, cause they had a suspect in custody and didn’t want him to see us. So we sat in the back and confirmed it was their car. We then sat there for a while marveling at all this while the detectives did god knows what. Eventually one came back to tell us that they had one suspect but not the gun they used and that they thought the hijackers had thrown it out the window somewhere around here and they couldn’t leave till it was found. At first, while irksome as it was fucking almost 3am and the girls were physically and emotionally exhausted, and sitting in the back of a cop car, even at a sweet crime scene, is pretty dull, it seemed a reasonable enough.
What we didn’t realize was that the cops saw the best way of finding the weapon was to beat the shit out of the suspect till he told them where it was. Now out of deference to our delicate western sensibilities or perhaps out of a painfully inept attempt at discretion the cops walked the suspect out of our line of sight around the corner. They didn’t take him very far though, apparently failing to consider that even if we couldn’t see them beat him with a long narrow piece of pvc pipe and a belt, we could definitely hear the “thwacks” and hear his loud and prolonged screaming.
Now I’ve written about witnessing a police beating in the Kumba Prison last year, and how while completely against it I found myself strangely untraumatized by it. This time was a little harder. Not that initially it was any more disturbing but it went on for so long, almost a full three hours, that it became disturbing and then just ridiculous, so over the top that it was laughable. During this whole period we were left in the increasingly cramped and increasingly cold back of the cop car, watching the movements of the late night denizens of the neighborhood and listening to the continual moaning of the unseen suspect. Really the only positive at this point was that Katie’s purse was recovered from the back of the car with their keys and her (unfortunately) now cancelled credit card, etc.
Finally, around 5am the group of cops and the now shirtless suspect came back around the corner. The detective was happy to tell us, “We found the weapon.” No shit? Really? How’d you pull that off? His partner carried the weapon on the beating stick, running it through the trigger guard. The way it bounced around on there worried the shit out of the girls. I was too preoccupied by the observation that the lead detective, who was carrying a belt (presumably used to beat the suspect) STILL HAD HIS BELT ON. So he actually carries a second belt so his pants don’t fall down when he’s beating a suspect? REALLY? THAT’S RIDICULOUS!
I was still marveling at that when the detective, long overdue back at the office slammed the car into gear and careened off at what seemed close to 200km an hour, a scary speed on the highway much less the narrow neighborhood roads leading to it. We all almost ate it when he hit a roundabout, the whole time the gun hanging from the trigger guard bouncing on the beating stick, and our road warrior driver focused on complaining and examining the large blister that was developing in his palm as the result of his “exertions” over the last three hours.
I encourage you to pause and reflect on that.
We hit the station sometime around 530 where we met the cop who had initially spotted the suspicious actions of the suspects. He was a young guy and he was fucking jazzed up. He was bursting with pride and really excited to meet us. He then chugged most of a 1.5 liter bottle of Coke and then slammed it on the ground. I get the feeling that these guys don’t get to win a lot so I let him have his moment. After all what’s a little littering after a few hours of serious human rights violations?
The girls had to continue giving their statements cause, as I discovered when I got ticketed for an expired license tag, the cops here are practically illiterate. It took them well over an hour in the police station. Done all by hand cause the office appeared to have only one computer it took a looooong time to get down even the most basic fact. Specially when there were frequent interjections from the detectives along the lines of “Was the carjacker wearing a necklace?”
(The girls) “I think so.”
(South Africa’s finest) “Was it red?”
(The girls) “I can’t remember.”
(South Africa’s finest) “But it was red WASN’T IT?” Nudge nudge. Sweet, nothing like taking care of witness tampering right there at the beginning. That’s showing the right initiative.
I was clearly not needed at all for this bit, and since I had my computer bag with me (we had been using my wifi to cancel credit cards earlier in the ordeal) I popped it open and entertained myself by checking my email and coming up with exciting status messages for Gmail and Facebook. I was in the middle of doing this when they brought in the suspect to get fingerprinted. The 1920’s era fingerprinting apparatus was right next to my chair so I got a close up look at him. He was very quietly and placidly obeying the instructions of the fingerprinting cop when another office walked up out of nowhere and kicked him in the ass. Hard. I found this mildly surprising, though my capacity for shock I felt was diminishing as fast as the receding darkness as dawn began leaking through the windows. But my jaded exterior lasted approximately 30 seconds as unable to walk away after just one kick the cop ran back and proceeded to beat him in the face. It didn’t last all that long in the grand scheme of that guys beatings this evening but it sure seemed a long time to the tired kid sitting almost directly under the altercation.
My first thought was “What the fuck”, my second was, “Don’t get blood on my computer” my third was I need to update my Facebook status. In many ways I found that a deeply profound post-modern statement on life in the age of social media. I also found it deeply ridiculous as I think the last time I actually posted a Facebook status was a couple months ago but the only other alternative to publicizing in real time the insanity we had been going through all night was tweeting. So I chose the lesser of two evils.
The cop got bored or tired and stopped, the guy (who didn’t say a word through this or visibly change expression at all) finished giving his fingerprints and the girls finished their statements, meaning that at 645am we finally were allowed to leave. A cop gave us a ride to my car in Obz, thankfully sitting untouched, and I drove the girls home.
Now they wanted nothing more in the world at this point than to take a shower and clean the grime and misery of the evening from them, but they don’t have a shower at their place, just a bath. They shower at their gym, so I offered to give them a lift there too after they collected some clothes. We went in their apartment complex. Mei Li had her stuff but Katie had just done laundry and had left her clothes out to dry on the line. We went out to get them and they were gone. Normally Katie would have taken them in last night but she was unavoidably detained by a carjacking and so her stuff had sat on the line all night until someone kicked in the courtyard door and stole her clothes.
…
I couldn’t help it. This was the point where I absolutely died laughing. It’s terrible, what a kicker to such a terrible night, to come home and find you were the victim of a second robbery. But holy fuck, at 7am after the insanity of the last 6 hours it was so over the top and unbelievable that it was impossible not to laugh. Even Katie managed to see the humor in it in between inventorying what items remained.
They fucking stole her clothes; while she was being carjacked. Jesus Christ, what a fucking night.