Johannesburg - A station commander has allegedly denied two police officers entry to their office by locking them out.
Diepkloof police station’s two crime intelligence officers reported for duty on Monday to find a rusted chain hanging over the burglar door, with two locks attached to it, allegedly at the order of the station commander.
The two officers had allegedly laid separate grievances of victimisation and harassment against Jeremiah Malesela and another senior officer at the station. However, the police top brass have denied this.
South African Police Union provincial organiser Mogale Mmutle said he realised that what was happening was more of a personal issue than anything else when he called the pair’s cluster commander on Monday to set up a meeting.
“He just dropped the phone on me while I was still talking to him,” he said.
“This is a personal issue, something’s not right.”
Mmutle said he had gone to the police station to try to get to the bottom of what was happening, but had left fuming.
“Malesela told me that the office was his and not the pair’s, so he could not account to anyone,” he said. “It is clear that he is abusing his power and victimising the poor officers. The only thing left for him to say is that the police station is also his,” an angry Mmutle said.
The two officers, a man and a woman, were allegedly also informed that they would have to stop doing their crime intelligence work and start patrolling the streets. They refused, fearing that this was not in line with the work they were doing and that their careers would be jeopardised.
As crime intelligence officers, some of their duties include gathering information that will lead to the arrest of a perpetrator, identifying crime hotspots in Diepkloof and advising the police to monitor those areas, analysing dockets and checking whether the charges that have been put down are correct, and recruiting informers.
Through their information-gathering, the pair had helped to stop an eight-man gang that was believed to be on its way to rob a business in Booysens three weeks ago.
Firearms, metro police uniforms, fake car registration plates, a ladder, a jack hammer, a steel grinder and other tools were allegedly found in the gang’s possession.
The female officer, who is a captain with 21 years’ experience in the SAPS, said crime intelligence was her specialty and she could not understand why, all of a sudden, she would be told to leave it and do something that was so different.
“As we have been locked out and cannot work, the community of Diepkloof are the ones suffering,” she said.
Lieutenant-Colonel Lungelo Dlamini, the spokesman for the provincial police, declined to comment on whether the pair had now been told to patrol.
However, he said the allegations of victimisation of the pair by the station management were unfounded and that the man, who is a constable, had had his position streamlined for the purpose of service delivery.
The Star