{"id":60549,"date":"2016-11-28T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-11-28T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/echonews.sites.caxton.co.za\/60549\/hendrina-police-lied-about-drug-sting\/"},"modified":"2016-11-29T08:09:36","modified_gmt":"2016-11-29T06:09:36","slug":"hendrina-police-lied-about-drug-sting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/news-headlines\/2016\/11\/28\/hendrina-police-lied-about-drug-sting\/","title":{"rendered":"Hendrina Police lied about drug sting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hendrina SAPS made headlines all over the country earlier this month when a photo of a Police Constable handling pythons when searching for drugs went viral on social media.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mobserver.co.za\/59388\/saps-handle-slithering-pythons-to-uncover-drugs\/\" target=\"_blank\">Police handle slithering python to uncover drugs<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Police stated that \u201cninety pinches of nyaope were found at the premises. The man was then arrested and charged for being in possession of drugs\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Police spokeperson Captain Leonard Hlathi said that they have launched an internal probe into the matter.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"quote-solid\"><p>\u201cWe can confirm that no one was arrested and no drugs were found. It was not a Police operation as stated before. We will not comment further until the internal probe is complete\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The snake belongs to Andre Joubert of Hendrina &#8211; the only person in that town with snakes. He stated that Police wanted to see the snakes and asked to take a picture with them.<\/p>\n<p>Read other stories about snakes here:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mobserver.co.za\/46084\/snake-in-pool\/\" target=\"_blank\">Snake in pool<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mobserver.co.za\/16467\/inyoga\/\" target=\"_blank\">Woman eaten by snake<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mobserver.co.za\/17054\/no-snake-big-enough-to-eat-a-human-is-south-africa\/\" target=\"_blank\">No snake big enough to eat a human<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It appears that the Hendrina Police were not so brave when recently handling pythons \u201cto uncover a stash of drugs\u201d and apparently lied about the entire story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":60550,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"hasGravity":false,"cxt_article_byline":"Yaseen Gaffar","cxt_disable_google_ads":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2885,2],"tags":[5948,5947,1093,5944,5945,5946,5949,972,2258],"class_list":["post-60549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-crime-news","category-news-headlines","tag-bust","tag-corruption","tag-drugs","tag-hendrina-saps","tag-hendrina-snakes","tag-hlathi","tag-national-headlines","tag-police","tag-snake"],"category_labels":{"Category":"News","SubCategory":"Crime News"},"tag_labels":["bust","corruption","drugs","Hendrina SAPS","HENDRINA SNAKES","hLATHI","national headlines","police","snake"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}