Johannesburg - One in every 100 policemen in South Africa is involved in serious and violent crime.
And as long as the police service remains home to violent criminals, it is unlikely that the country will experience a sustained and significant decline in serious and violent crime.
These were some of the findings of a study released by the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) on Wednesday morning.
The study, called the Broken Blue Line, is an advocacy project operated by the IRR to draw attention to criminality within the SAPS, to study the extent of the problem and to develop policy solutions to stop it.
Other shocking figures released show that out of 9 000 reports against policemen to the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid), only 5 045 cases were completed with 83 criminal convictions, 135 disciplinary actions and 1 470 cases referred to the National Prosecuting Authority.
An issue, said the report, was that the police themselves would often be at the first line of reporting, and then play a role in the follow-up investigation.
This means that it is unlikely that cases of police involvement in criminality will result in convictions.
“The most frightening and important finding is that in South Africa, gangs have infiltrated the police, as opposed to police infiltrating gangs,” says the report.
The report was based on a selected 100 reported incidents between April 2011 and this month.
Of the 100, 32 related to murder and attempted murder, 22 to armed robberies, 26 to rape and 20 to other crimes such as torture, theft and burglary.
Police officers use their policing powers, as well as official equipment, to perpetrate crimes.
“It is with good reason that members of the public often do not trust the police and some are even afraid of them. They can no longer be sure that when they are reporting a crime, they are not reporting it to a criminal in uniform. Certainly women travelling alone at night have reason to fear the blue lights in the rear view mirrors,” says the report.
The middle classes and private sector will increasingly turn to private security companies to safeguard their lives and possessions. The trend in poor communities is to resort to vigilante justice.
Both sides of the country’s socio-economic spectrum will seek to isolate themselves from exposure to the police.
The study was based only on serious and violent crime and did not include bribery, corruption or petty harassment and assaults.
The report details possible solutions including:
- Re-instilling respect for the chain of command. Riah Phiyega is unlikely to instil confidence. A career officer with an established track record should replace her.
- Linking the police and a leading university to offer a degree programme.
- Better equipping Ipid.
- Establishing a new investigative agency within the Department of Justice, outside the control of the police, to actively seek out and prosecute corrupt officers.
- Decentralising the decision-making on station leadership.
- Depoliticising the appointment process.
The Star