Johannesburg - Serious violent crime is on the increase, police management is in disarray, police work is more dangerous than ever and public confidence in police is wavering.
These were some of the issues highlighted at the Institute for Security Studies’ (ISS) annual conference on crime reduction and criminal justice in Sandton last week.
The conference took place a few weeks after the annual release of the SAPS crime statistics for 2014/15, which showed murder up 5 percent nationwide and aggravated robberies up 9 percent.
South Africa has been through three police commissioners since 2000, two leaving under a cloud and the third, General Riah Phiyega, suspended last week pending an inquiry into her fitness to hold office.
The head of the governance, crime and justice division at the ISS, Gareth Newham, said there were no minimum standards for the appointment of a national commissioner and that those three appointments had been primarily political.
“Senior police appointments should be depoliticised. Only persons with expert knowledge should be appointed to senior policing positions,” he said, calling for professionalisation of the police service.
Advocate Vusi Pikoli, the former national director of public prosecutions (NDPP) and former commissioner of the inquiry into Khayelitsha policing, made a similar call. “The fight against crime must be depoliticised,” he said.
Advocate Johan Kruger, the director of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, assessed the way the NDPP is appointed – by President Jacob Zuma – and called for the president to make such an appointment only on the advice of the Judicial Service Commission or Parliament.
That would, said Kruger, “allow the process of appointing the NDPP to be more transparent and less susceptible to ‘insider trading’. It will also make the process subject to proper public and media scrutiny.
Two recent inquiries which looked at the police’s performance, the Marikana and Khayelitsha commissions, were frequently referred to.
ISS senior researcher Johan Burger said police leadership seemed unable or unwilling to address the organisational defects.
“It is astonishing that the pervasive problems undermining the effective and efficient performance of the South African Police Service are allowed to continue… That this is the case reflects badly on police management and also, indirectly, on the Civilian Secretariat for Police…”
The difficulties of policing and the difficulties of finding solutions to the crime rate were discussed, as was the need to take into account factors outside the police when looking for solutions to crime.
“Policing is a messy, confusing and overwhelming job,” commented Newham.
Irish police Detective Sergeant Gráinne Perkins, currently doing research at the University of Cape Town, discussed how the murder of police officers affects their peers’ behaviour. She described going with police on patrols in Cape Town townships, the dangers they face and how they dealt with it.
Inadequate public confidence in the police was also raised.
The Star
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