THERE is nothing unusual about raiding late night food joints, Police chief Fatai Owoseni has said.
Those joints, he said, have been discovered to be armouries for criminals.
It was gathered that guns and other dangerous weapons have been recovered from some late night food sellers who confessed to be members of armed robbery gangs.
Owoseni made the clarification following last week’s arrest of Sango Svengali and his friend by policemen attached to a road side food joint in Surulere, Lagos Mainland.
Svengali had taken to social media to decry how they were arrested and detained after they could not bribe the police; labelled as fanatics and forced to shave their beards.
According to Owoseni, the Area Commander, Tajudeen Bakare, an Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP), has denied ordering anyone to shave their beards, insisting his the victims were never brought before him.
He said: “We have been investigating the matter and I even openly chided the Area Commander but he insisted that he never gave any such orders nor called anyone a terrorist. They have also denied the allegation of extortion. But we will get to the root of the matter.
“But it must be stated clearly that during raid, the police target places that are suspected to be criminal hideouts. It is not like we are singling out food vendors.
“We have noticed over time that some of those vendors who still sell food around 1am or 2am are usually gang members or armouries for armed robbers. Some of them have been arrested and weapons recovered.
“But that does not mean we are saying people who are doing their genuine businesses should not. What we do most times is that if we suspect a place, we raid it and screen those arrested. Those with genuine reasons and means of identification are allowed to go.
“Other times, we simply advise the vendors to relocate to safer places if the areas they sell their food have been identified as criminal hideouts for their safety and those of their customers.”
The Nation gathered that a team from the Force Headquarters’ Complaint Response Unit (CRU) visited the Area Command last Thursday over the case.
It was gathered that the Divisional Police Officer (DPO) for Surulere was questioned and cleared.
The Nation gathered that the police were yet to establish the team that arrested Svengali and his friend in the wee hours of last Wednesday.
When contacted, Svengali identified one of the policemen who arrested them as Semiu.
He insisted that they were ordered to shave their beard, adding that there were many witnesses around them.
“They have been raiding for over a week. Some people have been there (cell) for two or three days. The woman selling noodles at Ogunlana escaped the arrest but a teenage boy who helps her was arrested.
“Because we patronise her, she came to the station to explain that we were simply eating. That we weren’t doing anything else but they also threw her inside the cell.
“They did not collect any money eventually because a lawyer came for us. Initially, one of the men was pushing us to bring N10,000 each. A lot of the policemen kept threatening us that if we didn’t shave our beard totally clean, the area commander won’t let us go,” he said.
