Cops heartened by ”overwhelming” community support in Cunupia

SHANE SU­PERVILLE

Se­nior Re­porter

A se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer says he is heart­ened by the sup­port and con­sid­er­a­tion ex­tend­ed to of­fi­cers by Cunu­pia res­i­dents as they ini­ti­at­ed a man­hunt against ban­dits.

One of­fi­cer who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty told Guardian Me­dia Ltd that he and oth­er of­fi­cers who were in­volved in the ini­tial search for the sus­pects were giv­en roti, chan­na, soft drinks and even pro­duce by res­i­dents, who thanked the of­fi­cers for their time­ly re­sponse.

"It's not every day you see that kind of ap­pre­ci­a­tion, and we are grate­ful that they could give us that help."

The of­fi­cer said the ban­dits were un­of­fi­cial­ly re­ferred to by po­lice and res­i­dents as the "tall boots crew", due to their use of tall rub­ber gar­den­ing boots they wore as they nav­i­gat­ed the tall grass and agri­cul­tur­al lands in the Cunu­pia com­mu­ni­ty.

Two pairs of rub­ber gar­den­ing boots were found dis­card­ed among crops, be­lieved to be those of the ban­dits.

A to­tal of four pis­tols were al­so seized af­ter the in­ci­dent.

As of Sun­day morn­ing, the iden­ti­ties of the four sus­pects killed were not of­fi­cial­ly con­firmed.

Po­lice said while they re­ceived some in­for­ma­tion on who the men were, there was no of­fi­cial con­fir­ma­tion as of 11 am.

Fur­ther search­es are un­der­way as two of the re­main­ing sus­pects re­main on the run.