Empty bullet casings litter Sauer street, blue lights flash and a dejected robber sits handcuffed in the back of a police van. Cops and robbers had had a shoot out in the centre of Johannesburg, two people injured and a bad guy arrested.

The dejected robber on Sauer street
Picture by Antoine de Ras

We stood behind the yellow tape, hunting for scrapes of information as more and more cops arrived.

Cops do this, they rush to a crime scene and then just hangout.

They call it a stand down, they climb out of their patrol cars, huddle in groups and bum cigarettes off each other.

Then they talk, of other more spectacular crime scenes, of touch and go shootouts or about that new blonde with the cute ass in Flying Squad.

One of the cops notices me and sidles up.

“You know I get so angry when people shot at me,” says the cop, staring at the dejected robber, who just an hour earlier was shooting it out with the police.

Bullets litter Sauer street
Picture by Antoine de Ras

“Once I had this guy, a monster of man, shooting at me. So I took a prone shot, lined him up from a dead rest.” “Pow Pow Pow,” his imaginary gun bucks in his two handed grasp.

“I shot him five times, I was so angry. So I am standing over him pointing my gun straight at his head. I was going to finish off the m****r   f**ker.

Now I am in Lenasia standing over this f**k and I am about to pull the trigger. And I am angry. Then I hear this little voice.

‘Officer, shoot him.’

I look behind me, there’s this Indian peeping over the wall of his house.

‘Officer, you must shoot him’

I know if I pop the guy, this is the kind of man who will go straight to the media.

So I put my gun away. I waited for backup to arrive and when they did we chatted lekker, like we are doing now. Only muchhhh later did we call the paramedics. They  took one look at him and called the morgue van.”

The cop, laughs, throws his cigarette in the gutter, then looks  at me. His eyes widening a touch as he noticed for the first time my notebook. “But hey, you from the media, you cant write this”.