Police raid of villages may cost government millions

The National National

By ZACHERY PER
ABOUT 40 people of the Yagaria local level government in Lufa, Eastern Highlands, took out a default judgment in the Kundiawa National Court that will pave the way for the State to pay millions of kina in damages for a police raid in 2012.
Kundiawa resident National Court judge Daniel Liosi awarded judgment in favour of plaintiffs Taisi Fukatine, Smith Overi, Paul Noso, Poli Nunu, Jacob Isapi, Milton Severe and 632 others on Friday.
The court stated that the State would be forced to pay huge sums of money for damages caused in a police raid if the plaintiffs proved damages caused during the raid of several villages in Yagaria in 2012.
The default judgment handed down by Justice Liosi, following a no-show by defendants – former provincial police commander of Eastern Highlands Supt Augustine Wampe, former police commissioner Tom Kulunga and the Independent State of PNG.
The court was told that on April 10-12, 2012, between 9am and 4pm, police led by Wampe, conducted raids in six villages in the Yagaria LLG area.
The plaintiffs claimed that on April 10, police from the Eastern Highlands travelled to Oliguti village and raided it.
They repeated the same the next day at the Kami, Atra Hapa and Matakrip villages and on April 12 they raided Fima and Kipolagana.
The people from the villages said police punched, kicked and used the butts of firearms to assault them.
They also claimed that police broke open trade stores and destroyed store goods by throwing them out.
Almost 100 pigs went missing that day, some shot and others just going missing.
The complainants told the court that while the raid was on, there were repeat shots from high-powered weapons by the police which caused panic among the people who fled for their lives.

One thought on “Police raid of villages may cost government millions”

  • Here we go again – they’ve always cost the state alot of money (from their annual salaries, allowances, vehicles) and yet again the looting and destruction of properties and loss of human lives at the hands of these legal thugs.

    There have been previous instances of similar costs incurred by the state from the criminal actions of police officers and one would wonder lessons learnt from such experiences will go towards changing behaviours mitigating and preventing costs to the state but we have not learnt from past experiences. They have, they are and they will continue incur costs to the state with their continued bad policing, similar to this in future, if nothing is done to address this.

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