THE first day on the beat for the new Johannesburg metropolitan police force started on a bad note when three of the new officers reportedly “brutally assaulted a 28-year-old motorcyclist while his hands were cuffed behind his back”, Beeld newspaper reports. Eyewitnesses to the incident in Anderson Street in the city centre on Friday morning shortly after 8:00 said they had never seen anything like it. “They punched him with terrific force. I saw him knocked down on the ground and being kicked. They punched him repeatedly.” It appears the man drove the wrong way down a one-way street against on-coming traffic before he was pulled off the road by the officers. Police representative Inspector Willem de Villiers on Friday said the 28-year-old man was being detained in the Johannesburg central police cells and is expected to be released on bail on Saturday. He is being charged with drunken driving, dangerous and negligent driving, assault of a police officer, crimen injuria and resisting arrest. At the departments launch on Friday, Gauteng premier Mbhazima Shilowa said he was determined that Johannesburg would become a lively city again, like New York or London.