Thieves and police

Yesterday became quite eventful as I had my first (and hopefully only) encounter with the Rwandan police. The entire experience was bizarre and shocking.

Around three o’clock, one of my friends and coworkers came to my house and told me that her cell phone had been stolen by a man who came to her house and pretended to be enrolled in a study at PSF. We decided to call the phone to see if anyone would answer, and, amazing, a man answered and demanded that my coworker pay him Rwf40,000 (US$80) for the phone. She, of course, refused, and we called the police. The police showed up at my house about an hour later and, after hearing my coworker’s story, assured us that they would have the phone back by Monday afternoon. I was certain we’d never see them, or the phone, again.

No more than two hours later, the police returned to my house, literally dragging the three men involved in the theft – the man who stole the phone, the man who bought the phone from him on the street and the commissioner of the deal – to my front porch. Everyone sat down at the table and an absurd conversation of English, French and Kinyarwanda ensued. In the end, my coworker identified the thief, he confessed and the phone was returned, but the man who bought the phone from the thief threw a fit because he had lost Rwf25,000 (US$50) in the deal. I might have felt sorry for him, were it not well known that phones purchased on the street in Kigali are stolen goods and had he not been the man with whom we spoke on the phone, who was demanding an even higher price from my coworker for her own stolen phone. Adding to that, we later found out that this man makes his living by buying and reselling stolen goods. I had no sympathy for him; but the police seemed on his side. It seems they promised him that he would be repaid if he provided information about the thief to them.

So now that my coworker’s phone was returned, the main issue was repaying Rwf25,000 to the man who bought the phone. The commissioner claimed to have received no money in the transaction, and the thief only had Rwf6,500 remaining from the deal. The policemen wanted everyone involved in the sale of the phone to come to the police station to give statements, but the man who bought the phone refused (probably knowing that he had no legitimate claim and, really, could be arrested himself), so everyone left, supposedly to resolve things “outside of the police station.”

This morning, my coworker called one of the policemen to find out about the resolution of the situation. The man calmly explained that the thief had given his Rwf6,500 to the man who bought the phone, as well as Rwf18,500 of heroin that he had in a matchbox in his pocket. And just like that, the commotion was over.

But I can’t decide what part of this story is the most absurd. Is it the fact that the police could actually track a stolen phone and return it? Or that they showed up at my house with the three guilty men in tow and we all sat on the front porch to discuss the incident? Or that the situation with the man who bought the phone was resolved by a thief handing over a matchbox of heroin to another criminal in a police station? It certainly leaves me with a mixed opinions of the justice system.