{"id":373326,"date":"2017-11-13T15:08:07","date_gmt":"2017-11-13T15:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=373326"},"modified":"2017-11-13T15:08:07","modified_gmt":"2017-11-13T15:08:07","slug":"south-african-church-group-attacks-johannesburg-police","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=373326","title":{"rendered":"South African church group attacks Johannesburg police"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">A South African police officer is recovering in hospital after being attacked by members of a church.<\/p>\n<p>The incident happened when traffic officers tried to tow away a car belonging to a member of the Johannesburg church.<\/p>\n<p>A video circulating on social media shows angry congregants approaching the officer, who fired warning shots. The officer is then punched to the ground.<\/p>\n<p>The church has defended its members&#8217; actions, saying they were attacked.<\/p>\n<p>In a Facebook post\u201a The Revelation Church of God said: &#8220;Instead of police helping to remove squatters from our land\u201a they choose to attack church members with shootings &amp; paper [sic] sprays&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But many on social media are blaming the church for the incident, which happened during a service on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>Local councillor Michael Sun called the attack &#8220;cowardly&#8221; and called on &#8220;the church members where this took place to identify those involved&#8230; so these perpetrators can be arrested and charged.&#8221;<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape has-caption full-width\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"responsive-image__img js-image-replace\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef-1.bbci.co.uk\/news\/624\/cpsprodpb\/48A0\/production\/_98729581_d9cad533-3e46-44c7-84d1-153359df949b.jpg\" alt=\"Councillor's statement\" width=\"976\" height=\"549\" data-highest-encountered-width=\"624\" \/><\/span><\/figure>\n<p>One of the congregants was arrested for the illegal possession of an officer&#8217;s service pistol.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A South African police officer is recovering in hospital after being attacked by members of a church. The incident happened when traffic officers tried to tow away a car belonging to a member of the Johannesburg church. A video circulating on social media shows angry congregants approaching the officer, who fired warning shots. The officer [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[3],"class_list":["post-373326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","tag-ghana-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=373326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373326\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=373326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=373326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=373326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}