Durban - Civil claims against the police now stand at a staggering R26 billion. This is despite aims to reduce the number and value over the past few years.
This is according to an article in the latest edition of the Institute of Security Studies SA Crime Quarterly.
The article, by Gwen Dereymaeker, a researcher at the Civil Society Prison Reform Initiative, a project of the Dullah Omar Institute at the University of the Western Cape, states that the police attributed the claims to officers not complying with standing orders, a high rate of unlawful arrests and detentions and because people were becoming more aware of their rights.
She said assaults, shooting incidents and other police actions including unlawful arrests made up the majority of claims the department dealt with.
Other claims were for accidents and damage to property.
Earlier this year, the police said there were a high number of claims in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, but they did not give statistics.
In its 2014/15 annual report, the police service said it had aimed to reduce the number of claims by 3.4%, but they had increased by 21% from 8 161 to 9 877 compared with the previous financial year.
The claim amounts also increased drastically, from R3.7bn to R9.5bn in the 2014/15 period. The R26bn is the accumulated value of claims lodged since the 2007/08 period that have yet to be finalised either by a court or through a settlement.
A recent KwaZulu-Natal case showed that being a policeman did not mean you would escape ill treatment by police officers.
In that case, Pietermaritzburg High Court Judge Peter Olsen found that the police were liable for damages in a lawsuit brought by police captain Paul Williams. He had testified that he had been dragged barefoot out of his car by officers and thrown into the back of a police van, accused of drunken driving.
The court found that Williams also sustained injuries when the van was driven in a manner that resulted in his being thrown around the back of the vehicle.
The court remarked that cases brought against the police for wrongful arrest and assault were not “an uncommon feature” on the court’s trial rolls.
The quantum of damages to be awarded to Williams will be decided later.
Dereymaeker said there was a backlog of claims pending against the police because they were not finalised in one financial year.
In the past eight years since the 2007/08 period, R1bn had been paid in compensation and the amount paid out had almost quadrupled, from R79m in 2009/10 to R250m in 2014/15.
However, the article said the R1bn accounted for only 4% of all amounts claimed, which suggested that several claims when finalised resulted in the police not being found liable to pay monetary damages. This could suggest that claims were unsubstantiated or “grossly inflated”.
In April, the national police commissioner of the time, Riah Phiyega, said a forensic investigation was needed as there were suspicions that there was collusion taking place in some of the claims.
A 2013 research paper by Dereymaeker and Lukas Muntingh found that law enforcement officials enjoyed de facto impunity for illegal acts they committed and that the vast majority of officials were not adequately internally disciplined or prosecuted.
Dereymaeker also questioned whether it had become a “business” to sue because of the public’s lack of confidence in the police.
“It may be that many people arrested by police officials immediately assume that the officials’ behaviour was illegal.”
According to Statistics South Africa’s Victims of Crime Survey, released earlier this month, just 57% of households were satisfied with the police in the 2014/15 financial year, down almost 3% compared with the previous year and well below the 64.7% satisfaction levels scored in 2011.
The Mercury
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